[cffi-devel] user: cffi in saved core?

[Keith Irwin]

Folks--

I'm the guy with the toy "cl-browser" app which embeds gecko in a gtk app.

Some context:

What I want to do is create a nice standalone version so people don't
have to know implementation details and I therefor (if this goes
forward) don't have to write documentation.

What this means for me is that I'll create a shell script, save a core
with the code in it, save a copy of the runtime, build an installable
package, etc, etc, and then, in my script, do something like:

/usr/lib/cl-browser/my-sbcl --core /usr/lib/cl-browser/my-core --eval
'(browser:main)'

So far so good.  This kind of thing has worked well for me on other projects.

The problem:

Alas, but when I try this with sbcl 0.9.7 and cffi (12/30/2005), I get
a segmentation fault.  Is this because of some problems with CFFI,
something inherent in SBCL and its memory model?

Here's what happens.

sbcl
* (require 'browser)
* (save-lisp-and-die "foo.core")

% sbcl --core foo.core --eval '(browser:main)'
... my debug output printf stuff ...
Segmentation fault

And that's the end of the story.  The browser appears momentarily,
then goes away.  As near as I can tell, this happens about the time I
try connecting callbacks to signals defined in the glade file.

On one test of tall this, I got:

  connecting glade signals  <== my printf
  fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 8097(tid 3085362880):
  fault in heap page not marked as write-protected

So, does this mean we can't save a core with CFFI in it?  I know there
are other ways I can simulate a standalone executable, but I was just
wondering if we users should just take for granted we can't build a
new core file (with sbcl, anyway), or is this just an ongoing problem
yet to be fixed?

Thanks,

Keith