[cffi-devel] Merging the cffi+lotsastuff branch; new dependencies

[Daniel Herring]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Luis Oliveira wrote:
> I'd like to merge cffi+lotsastuff[1] with the main branch soon. People
> have started using that branch in several projects and that has
> generated unnecessary confusion. This branch includes the following
> new features:
>
>  - efficient external-format support for foreign strings
>  - cffi-grovel
>  - emulated long-long types
>  - other minor stuff
>
> The only problem is that this branch brings in 3 new dependencies:
> babel[2], trivial-features[3] and alexandria[4]. Is this a big
> problem? I hope it isn't and I'll do the merge soon unless there are
> any objections.

I'd prefer if you held off on this one.

In particular, trivial-features bothers me.  Libraries probably shouldn't
modify the features set by an implementation.  I would feel much more 
comfortable if all names were prefixed to reduce conflict.
e.g. set :tf-darwin and :tf-linux instead of :darwin and :linux

Other thoughts:
Babel is used for external string support, right?  Does it slow down the 
base, untranslated case?  Could it be optional/disabled for those of us 
who don't want translation?

Is there a structural reason to merge grovel with cffi?  If not, could 
they stay separate?  Does that reduce the core CFFI dependencies?  You 
probably integrated grovel for trivial-features...  Could tf search for 
:cffi-grovel in *features* and implement a fallback if not found?

Emulated long-long?  Sounds good.

Thanks,
Daniel