[cfe-dev] Distributing libclang-cpp.dll for Windows in the pre-built downloads

[Stephen Crane via cfe-dev]

Hi all,

I'm working to transition rust-bindgen from libclang to using the
clang libtooling C++ interface directly. This is unfortunately
necessary because there is a great deal of details about AST nodes
that we need but isn't exposed by libclang. I'm comfortable using and
maintaining a library interface on top of the C++ APIs, that's not a
problem.

However, I am hitting a wall on distribution for Windows. Would it at
all a possibility to include the new libclang-cpp library and headers
on Windows in the pre-built binaries? The only real alternative I see
is making users build LLVM+Clang from source, which seems prohibitive
in many cases, or distributing my own binary build, which I prefer not
to resort to for a single open-source Rust tool.

Adding C++ libraries on Windows potentially introduces issues by
exposing the C++ ABI directly,  so I think we would have to specify
which C++ library and toolchain each release was built with.

Thanks,
Stephen