[omniORB] omniORB and Pascal

[mik@geosys.ru]

06.04.01 16:34:53, Benoit Allombert <b_allombert@ifrance.com> wrote:

>I wanna use omniORB lib with a pascal object language 
>can i do it ? if not what can i do ?

Hello, Benoit!

I have recently made a successful port of omniORB to Borland C++ -- please see my previos today's message to the omniorb-list. As Borland C++ and Delphi are 
largerly binary-compatible (though such features are not documented well), a reuse of these DLLs from Object Pascal is likely. There are several issues with it 
though:

First, I have started to rewrite C++ headers to Pascal units. But there are VERY many lines in them all, so the process will not be quick anyway.

Second, there is no official Pascal language mapping. Some ORBit people tryed to get started on functional C mapping, but the effort seems to be discontinued. 
VisiBroker for Delphi mapping is heavily dependent on COM-specific constructs and will be hard to immitate with omniORB. I am trying to follow the C++ mapping 
as close as possible for now.

Third, some intermediate layer will still be necessary to adopt for such features not dreamed of in Pascal, e.g. multiple inheritance, first of all.

Also some effort should be made to target other Pascal compilers out there -- I consider Free Pascal the most important. But for my platform (Win32) that implies 
getting omniORB built with gcc/MinGW (preferred) or Cygwin.  So, omniORBpas is possible but will not be ready in the very near future, I think.

I would welcome any suggestions on the topic.

Best regards,
		Mikhail Soukhanov