An Old Question about BCB

[OrNot]

hi,there,
There are several threads in the forums which had talked about the issues of ice in c++ builder. I know ice does not support bcb. I am not sure if it is possible to sucessfully compile ice with bcb ,since some new template features used by ice may not exist in bcb complier . If possible, is the work of migration to bcb hard?
Due to some historical reasons, I have to use bcb in my current project. but it is very difficult for me to resist the temptation of using ICE after I knew it. Is there a compromise, for instance, I build some DLLs with ice in VC++ and make some calls to them?
Oh,God, Since you create a good thing like ICE, why not endow it with omnipotent functions such as supporting BCB.........

[bernard]

Support for another C++ compiler on Windows is just a question of commercial demand. Think about all the time and headaches you would save by using Ice with your favorite compiler, and how much this is worth to you

If you don't have a commercial need and have sufficient free time, you can also port Ice to your favorite C++ compiler. As long as the changes are reasonable and small, we'll happy to integrate them in the Ice source base. This is what happened for Ice on Linux/SPARC and FreeBSD/x86: thanks to contributions from Ice users, you should be able to build and use Ice on these platforms, although they are not officially supported.

If you choose the "do-it-yourself" route for Borland C++, you will face two sets of issues:

- C++ compilation problems
Ice for C++ builds with many compilers already, so you should not have many problems. We're aware of a few ifdef bugs on Windows (see
http://www.zeroc.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=1095); we'll try to elimate all these ifdef bugs in the Ice 2.2 release.

- Build system
Ice for C++ has already two build systems: a set of Visual Studio projects (for Windows/Visual C++) and a set of makefiles (GNU make required, for all other platforms). A third build system for Borland C++ would be quite undesirable, and it's very unlikely that we would add a new unsupported build system to the source base.

Cheers,
Bernard

[OrNot]

hi,Bernard,
Thank you for your reply.
If I import a ice.dll and a iceutil.dll into my bcb project as common DLLs and code the application ,which only need serveal method calls to ICE DLLs , can I bypass the problems probably being emerged when compling ICE DLLs ?
I mean if it is possible for me to use BCB and ICE DLLs
compiled by other compilers such as VC or gcc. I guess it may be OK but I am not very sure.
In fact, as you said, against all the time and headaches without ICE, it is worth for me to port it to bcb.However,
It is my last "Have-To".


Best Regards ----OrNot

[bernard]

If Borland C++ was binary compatible with Visual C++, then yes, you could use the Ice DLLs and import libraries with this compiler.

However I doubt this is the case; have a look at "Naming mangling in C++" in this wikipedia article.

Cheers,
Bernard