Rust and C++ FFI integration

Are the following statements an accurate representation of Rust/C++ FFI integration?

  1. If you use bindgen, expect to blacklistwhitelist lots of std::*

  2. If you want to call a templated C!+ function, you need to instantiate the template with the various arg combinitions you intend to use and have different externed names for each of them.

Thanks!

My $.02 is if you want to (relatively painlessly) use C++ code from Rust, expose a C API (and ABI) from the C++ code, and use that for interop. Essentially, the same thing you’d do to expose Rust code via FFI.

Sometimes you don’t have this choice, but if presented with it, I feel that’s the path with less headache along the way.

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How do you deal with C++ structs/class that takes template arguments? Do you instantiate every combo you might use?

Yes, there's no way (in any language) of avoiding that (at least without the capability to somehow invoke a real C++ compiler, or emulate most or all of one).

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Instantiating everything you want to expose with a C api is probably the best idea. It's relatively straightforward and doesn't have surprising failure modes.

Unless you are a C++ compiler, generating proper C++ bindings is extraordinarily difficult, and personally I wouldn't deploy automatically generated c++ bindings to production (bindgen has problems with some complex-but-common template features and inheritance, for example). It seems like there'a lot of pain using these bindings as well.

I think Rust => C++ is much easier, and while I don't know your use case that might be an approach worth considering.

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