Re: kbuild & C++

[Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at>]

On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 11:21 +0200, Esben Nielsen wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:20:11 +0200, Esben Nielsen said:
> > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s15-3 Why don't we rewrite the Linux kernel in C++?
> 
> I can't see it should be _that_ hard to make the kernel C++ friendly. At work 
> I use a RTOS written in plain C but where you can easily use C++ in kernel
> space (there is no user-space :-). We use gcc by the way.

Of course. Probably the easiest way is
-) to provide a pure C interface (read: write functions with C linkage
   that call your C++ stuff) to your C++ stuff
-) compile your C++ sources separately
-) kill all not-existing features needed by the linker and other
   programs (or implement them in the kernel/your module).

> PS. Do the above people break GPL by forcing people to accept a
> license-agreement before downloading a patch to the kernel? Shouldn't they
> provide a direct url?

As long as the license agreement does not conflict with the GPL, I can't
see a legal problem. And you can download their source - which is
probably GPL - and put it online wherever you want.
It is inpolite though, IMHO. But it is also inpolite to top-post, break
threads, include meaningless disclaimers, etc.

	Bernd
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