[mlpack] C binding

[Ryan Curtin]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 02:58:23PM +0200, Alain REYMOND wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> First of all, thanks to all mlpack contributors!
> 
> I haven't found a binding for C : the .h file with the 'extern "C" ' and the
> definition of the C++ functions of mlpack.
> Is someone aware of such a binding ?

Hi Alain,

Glad you're finding mlpack useful.  Right now there is not a
specifically maintained C binding, but I wonder if you couldn't just
wrap the functionality you need in an `extern "C"` block?

It might be nice to add specific C bindings for the machine learning
methods we do have, kind of like the ones we have for Python, Julia, or
the command line:

https://www.mlpack.org/doc/mlpack-3.3.0/python_documentation.html

In fact, for Julia (and for the Go bindings that aren't yet merged), we
first generate "intermediate" bindings to C, then use those from the
target language (Julia or Go).  However, the interfaces there are really
not very nice.  Still, it might be easy to adapt the automatic binding
generation system to produce C bindings also.

Anyway, I hope that this is helpful... if you can provide a bit more
details about your desired use case, maybe I can help a bit more. :)

Thanks!

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "Great party, isn't it?"
ryan at ratml.org |   - Delbert Grady