Cross-platform alternative to COM

Question

I\'ve been enamoured with component based programming (be it with COM, another system, or just using the paradigm in plain C++). It requires a bit of getting used to, if one is

Answer 1

ICE from ZeroC http://www.zeroc.com/ is another alternative.

For those CORBA old-timers, Michi Henning was one of the gurus of the day. He is now with ZeroC. It is an open-source, cross-platform, including all your targets (including Linux), system.

C++ is only one of the languages, and ICE's C++ bindings are significantly better than the CORBA C++ bindings are.

Answer 2

Take a look at D-Bus (yes, for windows too), which is the modern spiritual heir of various componentry frameworks (CORBA, Gnome Bonobo, KDE's DCOM).

If the cross-process marshalling turns out to be a performance problem, look to move the heavy lifting to shared memory (boost.interprocess will help keep it cross-platform).

Answer 3

I think you should take a look into VortexLibrary.

It is a complete BEEP implementation which provides a good foundation to develop any peer to peer application protocol. It already integrates authentication (using SASL) and secure connections (using TLS), both optionals.

Vortex also includes an implementation of the XML-RPC profile with an IDL compiler which should provide you with the enough foundation for the marshalling stuff....and the best is that you can later provide a more particular protocol, on top of the same session, to do binary transfer without being limited by XML-RPC.

It is programmed with C but also works with c++. Currently it is running, with regression tests ensuring its function under Linux, Windows and MAC.

Cheers!