Compiling multiple files

[elliotchance]

At the moment all the preprocessed code is output into a single Go file. If there were multiple files process you would get lots of duplicate symbols in the same package.

[cristim]

Would it work if it transpiled the C source files one to one to corresponding Go files which would then be compiled together?

It should also somehow handle subdirectories, like creating them in golang as sub-packages.

[elliotchance]

There are some complexities to consider:

1. Since the file (or files) are preprocessed in clang already theres no way of know which symbols belonged to which original file.
2. We will run into Go problems with effectively all functions not being exported so having multiple packages and have them work together like they would in C might get really tricky.

I don't know if there is any easy answers for this yet, but I'm happy to take it one step at a time and change stuff if ways don't work.

[elliotchance]

One solution is to preprocess all input files together and output a single Go file. The advantage is its simple, easy and should word. The disadvantage is that you will end up with one truely enormous Go file for a decent sized library that will be difficult to maintain. It will also not be possible to combine multiple translations together because all the duplicate symbols.