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Clang bindings for .NET and Mono written in C#

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ClangSharp

ClangSharp provides Clang bindings written in C#. It is self-hosted and auto-generates itself by parsing the Clang C header files using ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator.

Job Debug Status Release Status
Windows x86 Build Status Build Status
Windows x64 Build Status Build Status
Ubuntu 18.04 x64 Build Status Build Status
MacOS x64 Build Status Build Status

A nuget package for the project is provided here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/clangsharp. A .NET tool for the P/Invoke generator project is provided here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator

A convenience package which provides the native libClang library for several platforms is provided here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/libclang A helper package which exposes many Clang APIs missing from libClang is provided here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/libClangSharp

NOTE: These may be out of date as compared to the latest sources. New versions are published as appropriate and a nightly feed is not currently available.

Table of Contents

Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

License

Copyright (c) Microsoft and Contributors. All rights reserved. Licensed under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License. See LICENSE.txt in the project root for license information.

Features

  • Auto-generated using Clang C headers files, and supports all functionality exposed by them ~ which means you can build tooling around C/C++
  • Exposes the raw unsafe API for performance
  • Exposes a slightly higher abstraction that is type safe (CXIndex and CXTranslationUnit are different types, despite being pointers internally)
  • Exposes an again slightly higher abstraction that tries to mirror the Clang C++ Type Hierarchy where possible
  • Nearly identical to the Clang C APIs, e.g. clang_getDiagnosticSpelling in C, vs. clang.getDiagnosticSpelling (notice the . in the C# API)

Building Managed

ClangSharp requires the .NET 5 SDK and can be built simply with dotnet build -c Release.

You can reproduce what the CI environment does by running ./scripts/cibuild.cmd on Windows or ./scripts.cibuild.sh on Unix. This will download the required .NET SDK locally and use that to build the repo; it will also run through all available actions in the appropriate order.

There are also several build scripts in the repository root. On Windows these scripts end with .cmd and expect arguments with a - prefix. On Unix these scripts end with .sh and expect arguments with a -- prefix. By default, each script performs only the action specified in its name (i.e. restore only restores, build only builds, test only tests, and pack only packs). You can specify additional actions to be run by passing that name as an argument to the script (e.g. build.cmd -restore will perform a package restore and build; test.cmd -pack will run tests and package artifacts). Certain actions are dependent on a previous action having been run at least once. build depends on restore, test depends on build, and pack depends on build. This means the recommended first time action is build -restore.

You can see any additional options that are available by passing -help on Windows or --help on Unix to the available build scripts.

Building Native

ClangSharp provides a helper library, libClangSharp, that exposes additional functionality that is not available in libClang. Building this requires CMake 3.13 or later as well as a version of MSVC or Clang that supports C++ 17.

To succesfully build libClangSharp you must first build Clang (https://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html). The process done on Windows is roughly:

git clone https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project
cd llvm-project
mkdir artifacts/bin
cd artifacts/bin
cmake -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS=clang -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 -Thost=x64 ../../llvm

You can then open LLVM.sln in Visual Studio, change the configuration to Release and build the install project. Afterwards, you can then build libClangSharp where the process followed is roughly:

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/clangsharp
mkdir artifacts/bin/native
cd artifacts/bin/native
cmake -DPATH_TO_LLVM=../../../../llvm-project/artifacts/install/ -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 -Thost=x64 ../../..

You can then open libClangSharp.sln in Visual Studio, change the configuration to Release and build the ALL_BUILD project.

Generating Bindings

This program will take a given set of C or C++ header files and generate C# bindings from them. It is still a work-in-progress and not every declaration can have bindings generated today (contributions are welcome).

The simplest and recommended setup is to install the generator as a .NET tool and then use response files:

dotnet tool install --global ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator --version 11.0.0-beta2
ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator @generate.rsp

A response file allows you to specify and checkin the command line arguments in a text file, with one argument per line. For example: https://github.com/microsoft/ClangSharp/blob/main/sources/ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator/Properties/GenerateClang.rsp At a minimum, the command line expects one or more input files (-f), an output namespace (-n), and an output location (-o). A typical response file may also specify explicit files to traverse, configuration options, name remappings, and other fixups.

The full set of available switches:

ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator:
  ClangSharp P/Invoke Binding Generator

Usage:
  ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator [options]

Options:
  -a, --additional <<arg>>                                An argument to pass to Clang when parsing the input files.
                                                          [default: System.String[]]
  -c, --config <<arg>>                                    Aconfiguration option that controls how the bindings are
                                                          generated. Specify 'help' to see the available options.
                                                          [default: System.String[]]
  -D, --define-macro <<macro>=<value>>                    Define <macro> to <value> (or 1 if <value> omitted).
                                                          [default: System.String[]]
  -e, --exclude <<name>>                                  Adeclaration name to exclude from binding generation.
                                                          [default: System.String[]]
  -f, --file <<file>>                                     Afile to parse and generate bindings for. [default:
                                                          System.String[]]
  -F, --file-directory <<directory>>                      The base path for files to parse. [default: ]
  -h, --headerFile <<file>>                               Afile which contains the header to prefix every generated
                                                          file with. [default: ]
  -I, --include-directory <<arg>>                         Add directory to include search path. [default:
                                                          System.String[]]
  -x, --language <<arg>>                                  Treat subsequent input files as having type <language>.
                                                          [default: c++]
  -l, --libraryPath <<dllName>>                           The string to use in the DllImport attribute used when
                                                          generating bindings. [default: ]
  -m, --methodClassName <<className>>                     The name of the static class that will contain the generated
                                                          method bindings. [default: Methods]
  -n, --namespace <<namespace>>                           The namespace in which to place the generated bindings.
                                                          [default: ]
  -o, --output <<file>>                                   The output location to write the generated bindings to.
                                                          [default: ]
  -p, --prefixStrip <<prefix>>                            The prefix to strip from the generated method bindings.
                                                          [default: ]
  -r, --remap <<name>=<value>>                            Adeclaration name to be remapped to another name during
                                                          binding generation. [default: System.String[]]
  -std <<arg>>                                            Language standard to compile for. [default: c++17]
  -to, --test-output <<file>>                             The output location to write the generated tests to.
                                                          [default: ]
  -t, --traverse <<name>>                                 Afile name included either directly or indirectly by -f that
                                                          should be traversed during binding generation. [default:
                                                          System.String[]]
  -wa, --with-attribute <<remapped-name>=<value>>         An attribute to be added to the given remapped declaration
                                                          name during binding generation. [default: System.String[]]
  -wcc, --with-callconv <<remapped-name>=<value>>         Acalling convention to be used for the given declaration
                                                          during binding generation. [default: System.String[]]
  -wlb, --with-librarypath <<remapped-name>=<value>>      Alibrary path to be used for the given declaration during
                                                          binding generation. [default: System.String[]]
  -wsle, --with-setlasterror <<remapped-name>=<value>>    Add the SetLastError=true modifier to a given DllImport or
                                                          UnmanagedFunctionPointer. [default: System.String[]]
  -wt, --with-type <<remapped-name>=<value>>              Atype to be used for the given enum declaration during
                                                          binding generation. [default: System.String[]]
  -wu, --with-using <<remapped-name>=<value>>             Ausing directive to be included for the given remapped
                                                          declaration name during binding generation. [default:
                                                          System.String[]]
  -om, --output-mode <CSharp|Xml>                         The mode describing how the information collected from the
                                                          headers are presented in the resultant bindings. [default:
                                                          CSharp]
  --version                                               Show version information
  -?, -h, --help                                          Show help and usage information

The available configuration options (visible with -c help) are:

-c, --config <<arg>>    A configuration option that controls how the bindings are generated. Specify 'help' to see the available options.

Options:
  ?, h, help                               Show help and usage information for -c, --config

  compatible-codegen                       Bindings should be generated with .NET Standard 2.0 compatibility. Setting
                                           this disables preview code generation.
  latest-codegen                           Bindings should be generated for the latest stable version of .NET/C#. This
                                           is currently .NET 5/C# 9.
  preview-codegen                          Bindings should be generated for the latest preview version of .NET/C#.
                                           This is currently .NET 6/C# 10.

  single-file                              Bindings should be generated to a single output file. This is the default.
  multi-file                               Bindings should be generated so there is approximately one type per file.

  unix-types                               Bindings should be generated assuming Unix defaults. This is the default on
                                           Unix platforms.
  windows-types                            Bindings should be generated assuming Windows defaults. This is the default
                                           on Windows platforms.

  exclude-anonymous-field-helpers          The helper ref properties generated for fields in nested anonymous structs
                                           and unions should not be generated.
  exclude-com-proxies                      Types recognized as COM proxies should not have bindings generated. Thes
                                           are currently function declarations ending with _UserFree, _UserMarshal,
                                           _UserSize, _UserUnmarshal, _Proxy, or _Stub.
  exclude-default-remappings               Default remappings for well known types should not be added. This currently
                                           includes intptr_t, ptrdiff_t, size_t, and uintptr_t
  exclude-empty-records                    Bindings for records that contain no members should not be generated. These
                                           are commonly encountered for opaque handle like types such as HWND.
  exclude-enum-operators                   Bindings for operators over enum types should not be generated. These are
                                           largely unnecessary in C# as the operators are available by default.
  exclude-fnptr-codegen                    Generated bindings for latest or preview codegen should not use function
                                           pointers.
  exclude-funcs-with-body                  Bindings for functions with bodies should not be generated.
  preview-codegen-nint                     Generated bindings for latest or preview codegen should not use nint or
                                           nuint.
  exclude-using-statics-for-enums          Enum usages should be fully qualified and should not include a
                                           corresponding 'using static EnumName;'

  explicit-vtbls                           VTBLs should have an explicit type generated with named fields per entry.
  implicit-vtbls                           VTBLs should be implicit to reduce metadata bloat. This is the current
                                           default

  generate-tests-nunit                     Basic tests validating size, blittability, and associated metadata should
                                           be generated for NUnit.
  generate-tests-xunit                     Basic tests validating size, blittability, and associated metadata should
                                           be generated for XUnit.

  generate-aggressive-inlining             [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)] should be added to
                                           generated helper functions.
  generate-cpp-attributes                  [CppAttributeList("")] should be generated to document the encountered C++
                                           attributes.
  generate-macro-bindings                  Bindings for macro-definitions should be generated. This currently only
                                           works with value like macros and not function-like ones.
  generate-native-inheritance-attribute    [NativeInheritance("")] attribute should be generated to document the
                                           encountered C++ base type.
  generate-vtbl-index-attribute            [VtblIndex(#)] attribute should be generated to document the underlying
                                           VTBL index for a helper method.

  log-exclusions                           Alist of excluded declaration types should be generated. This will also log
                                           if the exclusion was due to an exact or partial match.
  log-potential-typedef-remappings         Alist of potential typedef remappings should be generated. This can help
                                           identify missing remappings.
  log-visited-files                        Alist of the visited files should be generated. This can help identify
                                           traversal issues.

Spotlight

The P/Invoke Generator is currently used by several projects:

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