[cffi-devel] lispname/cname ordering

[James Bielman]

On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 23:59 -0800, Matthew Backes wrote:
> CFFI tends to have name specifications like (c-name lisp-name)  
> whenever fully specifying the names as a list.
> 
> In CFFI-Grovel, we're tentatively doing (lisp-name &rest c-names) in  
> several places (for constants and enums).  This is so that we can  
> easily provide a list of alternative c-names for the groveler to try  
> as it hunts for the symbol.  e.g.:
> 
> (defconstant (path-max "PATH_MAX" "MAXPATHLEN"))
> 
> which covers both SYSVish and BSDish systems.
> 
> But this is bad because it's backwards from what CFFI does.  Anyone  
> have any ideas on a good syntax?  I'd really like groveler forms to  
> strongly resemble CFFI (or CL) forms to reduce user confusion.

Personally, I find it confusing to use the same name as a CL or CFFI
operator with a different syntax and semantics.  If I understand how
CFFI-GROVEL works, the forms in the constants file are data, not code,
so it doesn't seem appropriate to try to make them look like code.

What about a syntax like:

(type "size_t" :size :unsigned)
(constant ("PATH_MAX" "MAXPATHLEN") path-max)
;; This struct syntax probably needs some work...
(struct "pollfd" pollfd
  (("fd" fd)
   ("events" events)
   ("revents" revents))
  (:documentation "Poll file descriptor structure."))
(variable "errno" errno :int)

with the general form being:

(OBJECT C-NAME-STRING-OR-LIST LISP-NAME &rest options)

(I assume this is grossly incompatible with SB-GROVEL, which I haven't
really used.  Obviously if you are trying to stay close to SB-GROVEL,
this might not be a good idea...)

James