Projecting native application programming interfaces of an operating system into other programming languages

摘要

Information about the operating system application programming interfaces is stored in a known format in a known location. This information fully describes the APIs exposed by the operating system and is stored in API metadata files. A language compiler or interpreter uses this API information to build a natural and familiar representation of the native system API in the target language. The language compiler or interpreter can read the API information at compile time and/or runtime. The metadata is used to allow an application to refer to named elements in the API. Projections are built that use the metadata to map named elements in the API to named elements in the target language, and to define wrappers that marshal data of those elements between the target representation and the native operating system representation.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented process comprising:
accessing metadata stored in a computer and describing application programming interfaces of an operating system of the computer, the metadata describing elements of the application programming interfaces in a machine readable programming language independent format and being stored in a standard format in a known location as part of the operating system of the computer; receiving into memory an indication of a named element in a program in a target programming language referring to an element of one of the application programming interfaces of the operating system of the computer; and processing the program, by a processing system of the computer, and using the metadata, to create computer program code defining a projection element in the program in the target programming language, the projection element being a projection of the element of the application programming interface of the operating system to the named element in the program, the projection element configuring, at runtime, the processing system of the computer to marshal data between an operating system representation and an application representation according to type such that, at runtime, the projection element in the program configures the processing system of the computer allow the program to access the application program interface of the operating system of the computer.