Proof of concept: Template functions

[Danacus]

Hi, I wanted to explore if bindgen could support template functions and methods if some explicit instantiations are given in the header file, as explained in #492 (implicit instantiations also work just fine, clang doesn't seem to make a large distinction anyway).

As I mentioned in this issue, I believe this is currently not possible due to a limitation of libclang, so I decided to patch libclang such that instantiations of a template function are visited (patch based on LLVM 16):

diff --git a/clang/tools/libclang/CIndex.cpp b/clang/tools/libclang/CIndex.cpp
index 15652c499345..51c846356df0 100644
--- a/clang/tools/libclang/CIndex.cpp
+++ b/clang/tools/libclang/CIndex.cpp
@@ -950,7 +950,16 @@ bool CursorVisitor::VisitFunctionTemplateDecl(FunctionTemplateDecl *D) {
     return true;
 
   auto *FD = D->getTemplatedDecl();
-  return VisitAttributes(FD) || VisitFunctionDecl(FD);
+  if (VisitAttributes(FD))
+    return true;
+  if (VisitFunctionDecl(FD))
+    return true;
+
+  for (auto *Child : D->specializations())
+    if (Visit(MakeCXCursor(Child, TU)))
+      return true; 
+  
+  return false;
 }
 
 bool CursorVisitor::VisitClassTemplateDecl(ClassTemplateDecl *D) {

With this patch, bindgen can support template functions with just 3 additional lines of code (e8efccb).

I then tried the same thing for template methods, which was a bit more difficult in bindgen, and this solution is very much a proof of concept, not final code to be merged.

Here is an example of this proof of concept:

C++ header:

template<class T> void foo(T t) { }

// Explicit instantiation
extern template void foo(int);

class Test {
public:
  template <typename T> int bar(T t);
};

// Explicit instantiation
extern template int Test::bar(float);

void test() {
  // Implicit instantiation
  foo('f');

  Test t;
  // Implicit instantiation
  t.bar(5);
}

Generated Rust bindings:

/* automatically generated by rust-bindgen 0.68.1 */

extern "C" {
    #[link_name = "\u{1}_Z3fooIiEvT_"]
    pub fn foo(t: ::std::os::raw::c_int);
}
extern "C" {
    #[link_name = "\u{1}_Z3fooIcEvT_"]
    pub fn foo1(t: ::std::os::raw::c_char);
}
#[repr(C)]
#[derive(Debug, Copy, Clone)]
pub struct Test {
    pub _address: u8,
}
#[test]
fn bindgen_test_layout_Test() {
    assert_eq!(
        ::std::mem::size_of::<Test>(),
        1usize,
        concat!("Size of: ", stringify!(Test))
    );
    assert_eq!(
        ::std::mem::align_of::<Test>(),
        1usize,
        concat!("Alignment of ", stringify!(Test))
    );
}
extern "C" {
    #[link_name = "\u{1}_ZN4Test3barIfEEiT_"]
    pub fn Test_bar(this: *mut Test, t: f32) -> ::std::os::raw::c_int;
}
extern "C" {
    #[link_name = "\u{1}_ZN4Test3barIiEEiT_"]
    pub fn Test_bar1(
        this: *mut Test,
        t: ::std::os::raw::c_int,
    ) -> ::std::os::raw::c_int;
}
impl Test {
    #[inline]
    pub unsafe fn bar(&mut self, t: f32) -> ::std::os::raw::c_int {
        Test_bar(self, t)
    }
    #[inline]
    pub unsafe fn bar1(
        &mut self,
        t: ::std::os::raw::c_int,
    ) -> ::std::os::raw::c_int {
        Test_bar1(self, t)
    }
}
extern "C" {
    #[link_name = "\u{1}_Z4testv"]
    pub fn test();
}

Would it be useful/interesting/worthwhile to open a PR on the LLVM repository to propose these changes, such that support for template functions can be implemented in bindgen? Or is there anything I have overlooked that might make things more complicated than they appear to be at first glance?

[rustbot]

☔ The latest upstream changes (possibly #3365) made this pull request unmergeable. Please resolve the merge conflicts.