[lazarus] IDL Parser for libIDL, ORBit & bonobo

[Andrew Johnson]

Lately I have been working on porting GNOME headers to FPC, and one 
exceptionally large challenge has been working out how to port the BONOBO 
infrastructure acturately so that it could be used properly as well. I have 
come across a problem I hadn't even yet considered - IDL. BONOBO, being a 
CORBA based framework, requires ORBit and libIDL. No sweat, it has taken 
longer than planned but I have gotten (I believe) all of libIDL working, and 
I believe with work arounds to the libc/pthread dependencies, should be able 
to get ORBit fully functional as well. From there I can port BONOBO headers, 
however I realized that all this is only marginally helpfull, because there 
is not an IDL2Pas/IDL2PP program for FPC, and in spite of having libIDL at 
my disposal, I am completely clueless how to even begin! This means it will 
be nearly impossible to use things properly. Such as existing IDL 
frameworks, sharing new IDL frameworks and so forth. I have only done this 
using DELPHI's RAD tools before, so I am clueless where to even begin on the 
actual .idl file level.

So to sum up - does anybody out there have any idea how to build an IDL2PP 
converter? Preferably completely based on FPC, so that in the future it 
could be used on other platforms and with other CORBA(aka not ORBit) 
engines, but even to begin with based on libIDL to get thigs started. 
Obviously some things just won't work properly under 1.0.x, such as 
Interfaces, but I believe under 1.1 they are starting to work(if not already 
functional), and most everything else should work under FPC 1.0.x, it just 
means that some  IDL frameworks/objects won't work properly unless using the 
1.1 branch, or 1.2 when it arrives.

Anyway.. any ideas anyone? Or better yet, a fully functional completely FPC 
derived/compatible non-os/non-cpu specific program, completely under the 
lpgpl, which has already been written!? Or. maybe not.. ;-)

Andrew

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