Bluetooth on Lazarus/FreePascal on Mac OS X

Question

Has anyone used Bluetooth on Mac OS X with Lazarus or FreePascal? There is a bluetooth unit, but it currently only supports Linux.

Information about existing unit: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Bluetooth

I plan to enhance this to support Mac OS, but it would be nice to know if anyone has written any code to use BlueTooth on Mac OS already to avoid duplicated work.

On the other hand, if you have used XCode to access Bluetooth, what libraries did you use? I am sure I can discover this with the XCode profiler by opening some Bluetooth applications.

Note: Mac OS X doesn't appear to use the BlueZ library that Linux has, so I don't think the solution is as easy as changing the library path. Instead, it has IOBluetooth "Framework", located at /System/Library/Frameworks/IOBluetooth.framework.

Having a look, it looks like:

    kaikei.ocn.ntt.com:IOBluetooth.framework $ file *
    CodeResources: XML  document text
    Headers:       directory
    IOBluetooth:   Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
    IOBluetooth (for architecture x86_64):  Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64
    IOBluetooth (for architecture i386):    Mach-O dynamically linked shared library i386
    IOBluetooth (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc
    Resources:     directory
    Versions:      directory

On the other hand, I think if anyone had done this already, I would probably be able to find it on Google.... On the off chance I am wrong, please reply and let me know.

Clarification: I have created bindings for normal shared libraries before (f.e. sqlite3), but not for a "framework". If nobody has created bindings or otherwise used the MacOS Bluetooth framework from FreePascal, advice on how to use framework functions from FreePascal in general woule be appreciated. (And normally the functions I am porting are C based, not Obj-C, so I am not sure how to declare Obj-C methods in FPK, although I am sure I will be able to find some samples if I keep searching).

Answer 1

The main svn repository for translated Mac OS X framework C headers is http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/macosxintf/trunk

From time to time, FPC releases are synchronised with the latest versions hosted there. Note that the files in that repository (in the MPPInterfaces subdirectory) are in a generic format that can be automatically translated into either FPC, GPC or CodeWarrior Pascal versions.

To generate the FPC versions, use "make fpcpinterfaces", and find the results in the Build/FPCPinterfaces folder.

To translate new headers, execute something like this from inside a checked out copy of the macosxintf repository:   ./Scripts/Convert.pl /System/Library/Frameworks/IOBluetooth.framework/Headers/IOBluetooth.h FORCE MPPInterfaces

Afterwards, you'll still have to edit the resulting file to add/remove units and clean up some other things not handled by the automatic translation process. Once finished, you may want to submit a bug report at bugs.freepascal.org with the finished units.

(note: because I'm unregistered, I can only add in one url per post, so the next url's are a bit mangled to get around that restriction)

You can also subscribe to the Mac Pascal list (lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/mac-pascal) and ask there whether someone already translated those headers.

The Bluetooth framework indeed also contains some Objective-C headers. Objective-Pascal support is only available in the latest FPC svn versions, as described on the FPC wiki (google FPC_PasCocoa). You need this support in order to interface with Objective-C.

Translating Objective-C is probably easiest using the script elsewhere in FPC's svn (svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk/packages/cocoaint/utils/)

You may want to ask for help on the above-mentioned Mac Pascal list, as all people maintaining the aforementioned translations and translation tools are subscribed there.