[swift-users] [swift-build-dev] Importing C system libraries

Kelvin Ma kelvinsthirteen at gmail.com
Wed Mar 29 12:25:04 CDT 2017 

I don’t think this is a good approach, the libressl
<https://github.com/vapor/clibressl> repo is pretty much just the source
code of the C library copied and pasted into a Swift module. That’s not a
good thing™. The linux build paradigm is, the library maintains its own
*official* source repository, the OS package distributors build it, users
install the built dependencies with `sudo apt-get install libwhatever-dev`
and the project source just builds and links to the library managed by the
system.

Here you have to keep the forked library source up to date with the real
library source, download it from the internet and build the entire project
plus the libraries of which there could be many.

IMO the ideal way to import system libs would be for the user to install
the dependency with `apt`, just as you would for any C program, have the
`include` statements within the project source (like you would for any C
program), and then have the paths to `/usr/include` and `/usr/lib` and
`/usr/local/include` etc in a Makefile (or Package.swift). Usually it’s
only “specialty” libraries like libspiro that people download and build
manually, and even then, it’s downloaded from the Spiro project’s own
official repository, not a third party fork. That’s the “accepted” way to
do things, that linux ecosystems are designed around. Of course, this is
very similar to the modulemap system that currently works in Swift. I just
wish modulemaps could be streamlined a little, maybe combined with the top
level Package.swift.

On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 1:03 AM, Ankit Aggarwal <ankit_aggarwal at apple.com>
wrote:

>
> On 29-Mar-2017, at 11:22 AM, kelvinsthirteen at gmail.com wrote:
>
> I figured that was the intention, but we can’t be too surprised that
> everyone is maintaining personal modulemap repositories (and polluting
> search results — just try googling for a Swift PNG library!), especially
> when this central repo still doesn’t exist yet.
>
>
> Yeah thats unfortunate, maybe this will improve once we have an index.
>
> If Swift ever comes on par with C in terms of being usage and the lingua
> franca of the FOSS world, I can see linux distributions shipping standard
> modulemaps the same way they ship C headers, but you have to admit this is
> years (decades?) away at best.
>
> On the flip side of it, it does wonders in terms of motivating people (me
> at least) to start writing pure Swift replacements for some of these C
> libraries (like libpng)…
>
>
> I think its better to reuse existing libraries than writing from scratch
> (unless really needed). A good approach that works is "porting" these
> libraries to build with SwiftPM, see: libYAML
> <https://github.com/jpsim/Yams>, libressl
> <https://github.com/vapor/clibressl>. However, this porting can be
> difficult to do right but it should become much easier once we have build
> settings support and custom targets layout
> <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20170320/034469.html>
> .
>
>
> On Mar 29, 2017, at 12:42 AM, Ankit Aggarwal <ankit_aggarwal at apple.com>
> wrote:
>
> I think the idea was that there will be one such repository which other
> packages can use, that too only until the system libraries start shipping
> their standard modulemap. I thought we had this written down in our
> documentation somewhere but couldn't find it.
>
> Maybe Daniel can expand on this.
>
> On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Kelvin Ma via swift-build-dev <
> swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> This worked! Thanks! But why is having empty git repositories strewn
>> about the “correct” way? System libraries should be imported from within
>> the project, as they are in C. You have to admit it’s getting quite silly
>> that Swift devs keep repositories like these
>> <https://github.com/kelvin13/swift-zlib> on our github accounts. That
>> zlib repository contains exactly ten lines of code. I used to have 6 or 7
>> repos like that one up there before I got rid of them and switched to local
>> repos.
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 12:03 AM, Ankit Aggarwal <
>> ankit_aggarwal at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In this case, these are just umbrella headers. If your modulemap
>>> contains absolute path to the header, then you don't need the header files,
>>> but SwiftPM will probably warn about this. Note that this is a "hack" to
>>> have system packages inside a single repository. The correct way is to have
>>> system package as a separate published package which you only need to do
>>> once.
>>>
>>> On 29-Mar-2017, at 10:26 AM, Kelvin Ma <kelvinsthirteen at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I will try this, but why are the header files inside the Sources
>>> directory? System headers should live in /usr/include…
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:48 PM, Ankit Aggarwal <
>>> ankit_aggarwal at apple.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Apologies for not replying to this earlier.
>>>>
>>>> You can have multiple targets in a single package. Each target can
>>>> either be Swift or C-family. The type of target is determined by the
>>>> sources contained in it (*.c/*.cpp etc means C target, *.swift means Swift
>>>> target). So if you want to create multiple C targets, this layout should
>>>> work:
>>>>
>>>> Package.swift
>>>> Sources/
>>>>     Bitmap
>>>>     Cubify
>>>>     Cairo/anchor.c <---- This is just an empty file to tell SwiftPM
>>>> that this is a C target.
>>>>     Cairo/include/Cairo.h
>>>>     Cairo/include/module.modulemap
>>>>     GLFW/anchor.c
>>>>     GLFW/include/GLFW.h
>>>>     GLFW/include/module.modulemap
>>>>
>>>> The modulemap is automatically generated, if not provided. This is a
>>>> package which contains two targets (one C and one Swift):
>>>> https://github.com/jpsim/Yams
>>>>
>>>> If you need to pass a bunch of compiler flags, you can use SwiftPM's
>>>> pkgConfig feature but that will require you to have a separate repository
>>>> for Cario and GLFW. You can experiment without creating tags using the edit
>>>> feature
>>>> <https://github.com/apple/swift-package-manager/blob/master/Documentation/Usage.md#editable-packages>
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>> PS: You can join SwiftPM slack channel for quicker turn around time:
>>>> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-build-dev/Week
>>>> -of-Mon-20160530/000497.html
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Ankit
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Michael Ilseman via swift-build-dev <
>>>> swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This is into uncharted territory for me, but it seems you’re building
>>>>> with SwiftPM. You’ll probably want to configure extra compiler flags if
>>>>> that’s possible. You could also bite the bullet and build your C libraries
>>>>> with SwiftPM as well. Hopefully someone on swift-build-dev can help you out.
>>>>>
>>>>> CC-ing Ankit
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 28, 2017, at 5:09 PM, Kelvin Ma <kelvinsthirteen at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> How do I compile a project with many modules? My tree looks like this:
>>>>>
>>>>> <Selection_001.png>
>>>>> ​
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:47 PM, Michael Ilseman <milseman at apple.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Sure! In this example, I have built libgit2. I have a directory
>>>>>> called Git, and inside that I have the following module map:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> module Git [system] {
>>>>>>        header "<my path>/libgit2/include/git2.h"
>>>>>>        export *
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When I run, I use:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> swift -I <path-to-“Git”-directory> -L <path-to-built-libgit2> -lgit2
>>>>>> foo.swift
>>>>>>
>>>>>> inside foo.swift I can:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> import Git
>>>>>> // … use libGit2
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Read more about how to write a more appropriate module.map file for
>>>>>> your purposes at https://clang.llvm.org/docs/Modules.html. For
>>>>>> example, you might be able to define link flags inside the module.map, use
>>>>>> umbrella directories, submodules, etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mar 28, 2017, at 6:27 AM, Kelvin Ma <kelvinsthirteen at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Can you give an example?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Michael Ilseman <milseman at apple.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sure. At a low level, you can create a module.map file and use -L/-l
>>>>>>> flags in your invocation of Swift. If you want to do so at a higher level,
>>>>>>> then perhaps SwiftPM can. CCing swift-build-dev for the SwiftPM part.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> > On Mar 26, 2017, at 3:20 PM, Kelvin Ma via swift-users <
>>>>>>> swift-users at swift.org> wrote:
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > Idk if this has been asked before, but is there a way to import C
>>>>>>> libraries into a Swift project without creating a local git repo?
>>>>>>> Preferably something similar to C where you can just `#include` headers and
>>>>>>> then specify the link flags (in Package.swift?)
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > It’s getting very cumbersome to make a bunch of empty git repos
>>>>>>> just to use libglfw or libcairo.
>>>>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> > swift-users mailing list
>>>>>>> > swift-users at swift.org
>>>>>>> > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> swift-build-dev mailing list
>>>>> swift-build-dev at swift.org
>>>>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-build-dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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