Luke Boswell (Oct 17 2023 at 10:45): Luke Boswell (Oct 17 2023 at 10:45):TIL of XLL (DLL) for in-process office plugins.
From my explorations with Roc platforms and zig I feel like it is feasible to build a Roc platform which can call into Excel and also register functionality to be called from Excel. Simply run roc build and you have an .xll plugin which can be emailed to a colleague and they can add to their Excel workbook.
Is this a good idea? I don't know, but the idea that you could quickly and safely build plugins that are easy to write (using Roc instead of C), distribute (it's just linking against a pre-built host), and use really appeals to me.
Ironically, it's probably been a handful of Excel VBA macros I wrote years ago, not thinking too much about it at the time, that have been some of my greatest hits.
Does anyone have experience doing this kind of thing?
I'm definitely glossing over some key details, but I think it's a pretty cool idea and wanted to share.
Declan Joseph Maguire (Oct 17 2023 at 10:49):I definitely like the idea of pushing the platform/app structure as far as it can. If a platform abstractly represents anything that can run a program, recieve input, and yield output, then that's a lot of things. I can imagine writing a platform for things being almost like "Can it run Doom", if you can make a platform for it, it can do anything useful.
PS someone create RocDoom.
Last updated: Jun 16 2026 at 16:19 UTC