gir-compiler

A Pony code generator for GObject ecosystem bindings, driven by GIR (GObject Introspection) XML.

gir-compiler reads one or more .gir files, scans user Pony source to discover which types and methods are referenced, computes a demand-driven closure, and emits a self-contained Pony package tree that includes both the generated bindings and the hand-written runtime support needed to call into the library at runtime.

Status

Early. The v1 generator emits classes, interfaces, records, enums, bitfields, callbacks, and aliases for the GTK4 namespace set (Gtk-4.0, Gio-2.0, GObject-2.0, GLib-2.0). Method emission covers four body shapes:

• trivial void methods (primitives in, no return)
• trivial-return methods (primitives in, primitive out)
• floating-ref constructors (new create(...) adopting via GObjectHandle.adopt_floating)
• signal-connect methods (currently only close-request wired through the embedded runtime)

Anything outside the v1 shape catalog (GError-throwing methods, object returns, out parameters, varargs, etc.) emits a compile_error skip-stub the user's call site triggers at compile time with a useful message.

Usage

gir-compiler \
  --gir Gtk-4.0,Gio-2.0,GObject-2.0,GLib-2.0 \
  --src ./my-app \
  --target ./build

--gir is a comma-separated list of GIR namespace names. They're looked up in /usr/share/gir-1.0/ (Linux default).

--src is the directory containing your Pony source.

--target is the output directory. After running, it contains:

• gobject_runtime/ — GObjectHandle and related glue (embedded from gir-compiler; written verbatim on each run)
• gtk_runtime/ — pinned-actor GtkRuntime, signal trampolines, handler type aliases (embedded for the v1 GTK4 slice)
• gtk/, gio/, gobject/, glib/ — generated bindings, one file per type, organised by GIR namespace

To build the resulting package tree:

PONYPATH=./build ponyc my-app -o my-app

Library usage

The pipeline is also importable as four Pony packages:

• gir — GIR XML loader and validator producing GirModel val
• scanner — Pony source scanner (typed-binding walker) producing ScanResult val
• planner — closure planner producing EmitPlan val
• emitter — emitter writing the plan + embedded runtime to disk

Useful for tools that want to embed parts of the pipeline (LSP integration, in-memory analysis, alternative emission backends).

Build

make test

Requires corral and ponyc. The corral fetches libxml2, pony_compiler (in-tree under ponyc-work), and ssl.

License

See LICENSE.