Announce: flatcc, Flatbuffers for C

[mikkelfj]

I am happy to announce the first public release version 0.1.0 of flatcc:

https://github.com/dvidelabs/flatcc

Flatcc is a port of Googles Flatbuffers flatc compiler and generates code for C for binary .fbs schema.

It can be used as a library - a large for compilation, and a smaller for building buffers. Reading (and sorting) buffers is self-contained in the generated headers.

The generated C code has not been widely tested but the aim is to ensure at least the generated code (excluding the compiler) can run on even small emedded devices. The generated code can choose to only support read-only for minimum size overhead.

Hopefully the C interface will aid in porting FlatBuffers to more languages by using the flatcc_builder library component of flatcc. This library is the work horse for building flatbuffers in C, but it can also be used without generated wrappers and might be useful to speed up building flatbuffers from dynamic languages. The binary schema generation and available C interface for reading binary schema may also be useful in this context.

The test/monster_test.c program is probably a good place to start.

The performance is comparable to flatc's C++ output. Verification is currently lacking but will eventually happen.

Thanks to Wouter for answering many many questions on this subject, and for designing FlatBuffers in the first place.

Best,

Mikkel 

[mikkelfj]

Version 0.1.1 released

from ChangeLog

• Rename libflatccbuilder.a to libflatccrt.a (flatcc runtime).
• Add suffix to all generated files (monster_test.h -> monster_test_reader.h)
• Add buffer verifiers (`monster_test_verifier.h).
• Assert on error in flatcc builder by default.
• Fix -I include path regression in flatcc command.