amnu3387
Hi,
I’m not sure if a NIF is the best option for this - I’m also not experienced with C (don’t even know how to properly link libs, for instance) at all but I’m taking small steps in order to use OpenGL.
Imagine you are building a graphical interface that needs to do OpenGL. I can write a small program in C that just opens a window and stays there. All good.
My question now is, if I want to interact with this program, like send it draw commands so it applies them to the gl context, what would be the best way to do that? Although initially a toy project I would definitely prefer the option that is the most performant, as this would be something akin to a browser.
Do you know any good resources/libs for looking into this? I’m going for the lowest common denominator possible - elixir/erl ↔ c program using glfw3 - the C program also has to be able to callback somehow, since glfw handles user interaction on the window as well.
Any pointers welcomed, thanks
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lud
You could use a simple TCP socket between the two programs. Erlang has great support for that. Your C program would connect to the TCP server. Have a look at gen_tcp — OTP 29.0.2 (kernel 11.0.2) .
dimitarvp
UI naturally lends itself to message passing so I’d put a
GenServerin front of your native UI code so as to make it innately serial (one message at a time / no parallel processing of messages).As for the native interface, it could be C, Rust or anything you are comfortable with (but ergonomic caveats do still apply so I’d pick Rust 99% of the time).
amnu3387
Thanks, yes that could definitively work and I’ve used gen_tcp in the past.
I’m trying to learn a bit more about lower level code, with C and OpenGl in this case, and Erlang interfacing with these.
I’m not really knowledgeable when it comes to it so perhaps a tcp socket would be in fact the best way of doing it - but if say, you’re doing a lot of drawing wouldn’t it benefit somehow of being in a NIF ?
amnu3387
My idea would be that initially each tab would be a gen_statem, but eventually would move to being an erlang node. Then shared resources (caches, etc) would be shared through mnesia.
Yes, I’m not really comfortable with anything lower level hence why I want to practice - I chose C because I can’t understand what Rust brings on without understanding C - most examples for OpenGL go with c++ but I would really prefer to learn the basics first before going on some rabbit chasing
dimitarvp
Fair. As a preliminary spoiler alert: in C it’s trivial to allocate a memory buffer of 10 bytes and then try to get a value from the 11th element. This, oversimplified, has been the reason for most of the security fiascos in the last several years.
Rust prevents those.
amnu3387
Very oversimplified I would guess
ityonemo
Wait a second, am I wrong that Rust does not prevent you from trying to grab the 11th element of a 10-vector! that’s a runtime panic. If you want erroring bounds checking you need a wrapped type
dimitarvp
Ah, I was aiming at arrays.
And still, runtime panic isn’t the same as buffer [over|under]flow which can lead to the program being compromised. But I agree that panics aren’t very useful by themselves.
dominicletz
Just FYI you do have full access to OpenGL from elixir already today. Have a look at the wings3d project. It’s an OpenGL based 3d modeller written in Erlang http://www.wings3d.com/
Source code: GitHub - dgud/wings: Wings3D is an advanced sub-division 3D modeller. · GitHub
amnu3387
I had looked at wings (was surprised the forum still seems to be active), and also scenic that uses GLFW too, but got a bit overwhelmed on how to start/work the c part
like from easy mode and build from there as that’s how I learn better. I will certainly look into them for inspiration.