Automated Wrapper Generation with Clasp

[Georgiy Tugai]

(1) I believe that this tool should, at least initially, be written as an "application" rather than being part of Clasp in terms of the build system. This will reduce the amount of merging required (given how quickly Clasp is moving) as well as providing a proving ground for Clasp's support of such applications; I believe that CANDO does not fulfill this role given that Chris has decided to design it as a "fork" of Clasp. Admittedly, assuming that this project goes well, I would hope that the clbind-generator would become a part of the "standard library".

(2) According to my limited Lisp experience, I think that it would be relatively easy to keep the clbind-generator modular; this will at the very least simplify debugging and contribution, even if the structure is not flexible enough to introduce other targets.

If other targets are introduced, I believe that the first target should be whichever Common Lisp FFI system(s) are the de-facto standard outside of Clasp, so that Clasp code may become, to a certain extent, more portable to other Common Lisps. I do not expect full compatibility to be possible given Clasp's unique features.

(3) Multiple high-profile projects have run into copyright issues in the past; I believe that most of these stemmed from actions which legally require the consent of all contributors (who have contributed anything over 10 lines of code or equivalent) --- for example, relicensing from GPL to LGPL --- in combination with past contributors being out of contact for one reason or another, so their consent cannot be obtained.

This is, obviously, something for Chris to decide on.

I agree that keeping this tool (and other major projects like it) as independent project(s) will significantly simplify this issue.

(4) LaTeX is indeed great; however, I believe that there may be merit in investigating other documentation formats which may be more amenable to online publication, searching and introspection/reuse (e.g. export to/import from docstrings).

Note: I'm currently studying for exams, so my responses are likely to be delayed & I cannot commit a lot of time at the moment. After the 30th, I believe that I will have more time available for this project.

Regards,
Georgiy (a.k.a. SAL9000 on freenode)

P.S: If you have received this message twice, I apologize in advance.
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