Category:Sparkling: Difference between revisions

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== The reference implementation ==

The reference implementation is written in portable C89: "portable" in the sense that it tries to follow the ANSI C International Standard as strictly as possible. ~~This~~ does not mean, however, that the entire source is compatible with C++. The public API can be used from within a C++ program, though.

The reference implementation is written in portable C89: "portable" in the sense that it tries to follow the ANSI C International Standard (C89) as strictly as possible. It does not mean, however, that the entire source is compatible with C++. The public API can be used from within a C++ program, though.

~~The~~ Sparkling engine tries to make use of a bunch of convenient libraries in order to improve user experience. For instance, the REPL optionally uses the well-known readline library - if available - in order to provide basic line editing capabilities. Or, on OS X and iOS, the parser and runtime support library conditionally provide Objective-C bindings, so it's possible to call Objective-C methods directly from Sparkling, with proper Objective-C syntax. Neither of these features are required, though, nor do they impose a strong dependency on either libreadline or libobjc. The build system tries to guess if they are available and configures compilation accordingly.

Another aspect of portableness or platform-independence is that the Sparkling engine tries to make use of a bunch of convenient libraries in order to improve user experience. For instance, the REPL optionally uses the well-known readline library - if available - in order to provide basic line editing capabilities. Or, on OS X and iOS, the parser and runtime support library conditionally provide Objective-C bindings, so it's possible to call Objective-C methods directly from Sparkling, with proper Objective-C syntax. Neither of these features are required, though, nor do they impose a strong dependency on either libreadline or libobjc. The build system tries to guess if they are available and configures compilation accordingly.

The reference implementation is currently hosted on GitHub, at H2CO3/Sparkling[http://github.com/H2CO3/Sparkling].