On 10.08.2024 at 15:13, Christoph M. Becker wrote: > a week ago Denis Simonov submitted a PR[1] regarding formatting of the > new time zone types of Firebird 4.0 (which appears sensible per se). > This requires to access new Firebird APIs which are written in C++ (the > old Interbase APIs are still provided as C code). Now the Firebird > developers have written a tool for cross language support called > CLOOP[2] which allows to access the APIs written in C++ directly from C. > However, they do not provide these C APIs officially, so Denis provided > the minimal required C API for inclusion into the PDO_Firebird extension[3]. > > In my opinion, this a somewhat fragile approach (especially since > CLOOP's C generator apparently hasn't been tested for a rather long > time[4]) and would personally rather use C++ to access the new APIs. > This would obviously require a C++ compiler to build PDO_Firebird (so > far a C compiler is sufficient), unless the C++ code (and the respective > functionality) would be optional. > > Another drawback would affect the Windows builds; so far these just > could use the Firebird kits provided by the Firebird developers (which > contain headers and pre-built libraries), but these don't contain any > C++ libraries, so the libraries would need to be built and hosted by > winlibs[5] (at least for the time being). > > I *assume*, however, that (Linux) distros already provide pre-built C++ > libraries since the new Firebird OO API is available as of Firebird 3.0. > Maybe someone can confirm that. > > So what do you think? Should we use C++ to access the new APIs, or > stick with C (and include the required declarations in PDO_Firebird)? > > [1] <https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/15230> > [2] > <https://www.firebirdnews.org/new-firebird-interface-cloop-cross-language-object-oriented-programming/> > [3] > <https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/15230/files#diff-e0657e20b6fc2c130f504c18ebeeac828847f17f1f8f7c3559b8fe8b2bc19928> > [4] <https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird/issues/8197> > [5] <https://github.com/winlibs>
Thank you all for your comments! As far as I can see, there have been no objections to use C++ internally (and nicely tucked away) in PDO_Firebird, so I've just applied <https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/15230> to be able to get feedback from users as soon as possible. If there are still (minor) issues to be resolved, please file tickets on Github. If there are strong objections against requiring a C++ compiler, please raise them here, or file a ticket on Github (<https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/new/choose>). Thanks, Christoph
