XCOM 0.8

XCOM project is a system designed to support component based programming in Linux. Although the system primarily targets Linux other POSIX supporting operating systems and Win32 class operating systems are planned to be supported.
The following design goals are followed in making the current system:
- Binary interface standard
- Simplicity and ease of use
- Good C++ support
- Portability
Main features:
- Specialized IDL compiler generating C++ code.
- In-process components.
- Embedded metadata.
- Most of the common numeric data types.
- Narrow and wide string types.
- array, sequence, and struct types.
- Error reporting via exceptions.
The IDL compiler generates C++ code which conforms to the binary standard of XCOM. When the generated code is compiled its binary layout conforms to the XCOMs binary format. Most notably, other component systems uses virtual functions to implement this kind of functionality, but in XCOM a mix of templates and inheritance is used to provide a similar mechanism without using virtual functions because the mechanisms used for implementing virtual function mechanism may change from compiler to compiler. Also the binary format rules of the XCOM is designed to be not overly C++ oriented and not prohibit implementing remoting in the future.
The generated C++ code permits the use of the system without delving to the binary details, such as reference counting and memory management. In most of the scenarios all of these can be handled behind the scenes.
Error reporting via exceptions are also supported natively provided only the IDL defined exception objects are allowed to propagate through interface methods. Inheritance between exception types are also supported in order to support complex usage scenarios.
Enhancements:
- The project has been revived.
- It is compatible with new GCC versions, and has switched to the CMake build system.