MIDL and COM

[Peter Samuelson]

[Ove Kaaven]
> similarly, MIDL can certainly read FreeDCE IDL files (simply because
> MS-RPC was designed to be compatible with the original DCE RPC,
> except for several "Microsoft extensions"), but what these two
> implementations *do* (generate) with the parsed IDL is very
> different.

So different, really?  I thought both IDL compilers had basically the
same purpose, to generate interface code to which you link client and
server code for IPC or RPC.  As I understand it, the client and server
stubs use basically the same API in both IDL compilers.

I haven't investigated, but FreeDCE may not support COM directly the
way MIDL does.  Even so, it seemed to me that retargeting the FreeDCE
compiler so that its output links and runs with the winelib COM code
would be easier than writing a whole new MIDL clone.

Presumably this would require integrating the FreeDCE and Wine runtime
environments.  Looks like FreeDCE has a BSD-style license, so *legally*
it can be done, but of course I don't know if it's *practical*....

Peter