C addons

[libkakashi]

The current way of interacting with c APIs is to prefix an identifier with the dollar sign ($). For example,

import "header.h";

func main() i32 {
    $a_function_defined_in_header(...args);
    return 0;
}

The identifiers starting with a dollar sign are not type-checked for obvious reasons. This approach is very simple and straight forward but it is very unsafe and can cause serious issues in large applications.
Volant needs a more safe and robust way of managing c addons. The specific details of how that system will work are not yet fully decided but here's a rough idea for how the addons will work,

import "header.h";

// defining a foreign type
typedef foreign a_type_defined_header;

// defining a foreign function
func foreign a_function_defined_in_header(arg1: type1, ...) returnType;

// defining a foreign variable
a_variable_defined_in_header: foreign type;

This way, type-checking can be implemented for c-addons making them safe to use.

But there are a couple of things that make it hard for us to implement this,

• Volant functions are blocks, and there is so standard way to work with c functions in Volant.
• In Volant, enums, structs, and unions are typedef-ed internally, and Volant isn't compatible with types that aren't typedef-ed.

If you have any good ideas about how we can solve these problems, we would love to hear them.

[libkakashi]

git is weird :thonk: