Handle "native" dependencies

[damon-kwok]

This was edited by @SeanTAllen:

This started as an idea to use vcpkg from @damon-kwok.

https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg
Microsoft's vcpkg provides cross-platform c/c++ library installation. It works well with pony ffi.

It has since expanded into a conversation for handling native dependencies.

[damon-kwok]

I think corral's support for vcpkg only needs to include its lib file directory in the search path, so that users do not need to fill in the full path.

[SeanTAllen]

Corral doesn't have anything to do with c/c++ library installation. Rather than have an issue for this, I think it is important to first decide if and how we want to approach non-pony dependencies with corral.

@kulibali have you given any thought to non-pony dependencies and corral?

[chalcolith]

I haven't played with vcpkg any. I'm a bit hesitant to introduce an external dependency to corral. My tentative plan, which I swear I'm going to get around to any time now, is to introduce the ability to download binaries and put them in the PONY_PATH. The use case is merely to get the crypto and ssl libraries working on windows so that I can get ponyup working.

[SeanTAllen]

@kulibali any thoughts on how to do in a distro/OS dependent way?

[chalcolith]

The idea would be to have a section in corral.json like "libs": { "windows": { "bin": "foo.dll", "url": "https:foo.zip" }, "linux": {...} } and then corral would uncompress the archive, find the required bin file, and add the directory it's in to PONY_PATH.

[damon-kwok]

There are many compilers and distro/OS, and the burden of precompilation can be heavy. Provide the source address, using CORRAL to call VC GCC clang in local compilation, it can minimize the burden, maximum compatibility. There are many libraries that offer a number of options that users may want to tap into the compilation process.

[SeanTAllen]

@kulibali I think "linux" isn't expansive enough given the desire folks might have to use a package manager etc.

[SeanTAllen]

There are many compilers and distro/OS, and the burden of precompilation can be heavy. Provide the source address, using CORRAL to call VC GCC clang in local compilation, it can minimize the burden, maximum compatibility. There are many libraries that offer a number of options that users may want to tap into the compilation process.

It's unclear to me what you are suggesting.

[SeanTAllen]

Can anyone comment on what Rust's cargo does for this?

[damon-kwok]

Simply put, I don't think Corral needs to provide precompiled files for users to download. We can learn from the treatment of VCPKG. It simply provides the source code address and the script for the compilation process. Even so, this is a lot of work, so at this stage we can choose to use VCPKG directly. When I ran "VCPKG install openssl", I found the experience great and it worked well on non-Windows systems

[SeanTAllen]

What does " Corral needs to provide precompiled files for users to download" mean to you? I don't think anyone has suggested that Corral provides the libraries. Rather it can allow for them to be installed. Is that what you mean?

[damon-kwok]

I saw that Cargo didn't do a good job of that. It just used the library that came with the system. But I have noticed that the Rust ecosystem thrives, for example if you want to use MongoDB, the MongoDB team provides the Rust driver, so FFI is always an alternative to the Rust. So FFI is more important for Pony.

[SeanTAllen]

I saw that Cargo didn't do a good job of that.

Didn't do a good job of what @damon-kwok ?

[damon-kwok]

Corral needs to provide precompiled files for users to download"

I mean there's a lot of work involved in providing pre-compiled binaries.