Actually I've never asked. Are you guys comfortable with C++, and at what level? E.g.:

• Given a reimplementation, are you able to maintain it?
• Are you comfortable with class, smart pointer, and/or templating design? Would you want to learn through this process?

Thankfully it is possible to make gradual transitions for this, while keeping the C-api intact. In a nutshell, I would do it by making a C++ interface that calls the C interface, and then gradually make translations from one to the other in no particular order.

Main benefits that we can get:

• better memory management with less memory leaks
• better bindings since the intent and lifetime of the pointers can be passed to the other api
• thread safety
• simpler design through classes
• namespaces and simpler namings
• micro-optimization. Yes this is a negative, but the design exercise could be beneficial for other things down the line