Re: kbuild & C++

[Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>]

On 9/7/05, Esben Nielsen <simlo@phys.au.dk> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> 
> > On 9/6/05, Budde, Marco <budde@telos.de> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > for one of our customers I have to port a Windows driver to
> > > Linux. Large parts of the driver's backend code consists of
> > > C++.
> > >
> > > How can I compile this code with kbuild? The C++ support
> > > (I have tested with 2.6.11) of kbuild seems to be incomplete /
> > > not working.
> > >
> >
> > That would be because the kernel is written in *C* (and some asm), *not* C++.
> > There /is/ no C++ support.
> 
> Which is too bad. You can do stuff much more elegant, effectively and
> safer in C++ than in C. Yes, you can do inheritance in C, but it leaves
> it up to the user to make sure the type-casts are done OK every time. You
> can with macros do some dynamic typing, but not nearly as effectively as
> with templates, and those macros always comes very, very ugly. (Some say
> templates are ugly, but they first become ugly when they are used
> way beyond what you can do with macros.)
> 
> I think it can only be a plus to Linux to add C++ support for at least
> out-of-mainline drivers. Adding drivers written in C++ into the mainline
> is another thing.
> 

I was not trying to start a discussion about the merrits of C vs C++.
I was simply responding to marco's comment that "C++ support ... of
kbuild seems to be incomplete / not working".

As for C++ vs C.  I don't have anything against C++. I use it a lot
for userspace programs. I'm not sure I agree that it would be
appropriate for the kernel though, but that's a whole other
discussion.


-- 
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>
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