Re: Mostly Harmless: Welcoming our C++ friends

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> Ron Mayer wrote:
>> The one use-case I can think of that imports a pile of C++ code
>> is the GEOS library that PostGIS uses (used?):

> There are also quite a number of OSS algorithms, useful for query 
> optimization or otherwise, which are written in C++.  For example, the 
> fully OSS implementation of annealing (potentially useful as a 
> replacement for GEQO) is in C++.

Well, if we were actually contemplating using it, we'd rewrite it in C.
I don't see anyone around here who's in favor of increasing the minimum
build requirement to C++.  (Even if we were, there's exactly 0 chance
that an existing hunk of C++ code would follow our error handling and
memory allocation conventions, so we'd have to do significant rewriting
anyway.)

The PostGIS-style case, where someone writes some code to provide a
mostly arm's-length interface to an external library written in C++,
is the only case I can see much use for.  And that still leaves me
wondering what's the point of making our headers C++ clean, because
that external library isn't gonna include 'em anyway.
        regards, tom lane