[Ecls-list] Announcement: RDNZL - a .NET bridge for CL

[Edi Weitz]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:10:11 +0100, "Goffioul Michael" <goffioul at imec.be> wrote:

> I had a look at the code, but it doesn't seem to use UFFI.  You
> should definitively try to port your code to UFFI to get a broader
> LISP implementation support.

Nope.  I don't use UFFI for a reason:

1. The current version of RDNZL doesn't depend on any external
   libraries at all.

2. With UFFI you'll need at least another one (ASDF) and you'll add
   lots of code that RDNZL doesn't need.  This is all stuff you want
   to get rid of if you deliver an executable.

3. Also, both libraries are Unix-centric and don't work smoothly with
   Windows.

4. While UFFI adds a lot of things RDNZL doesn't need it is missing
   callbacks which /are/ needed by RDNZL.

5. Even if I used UFFI (and someone had implemented the callback
   support) there were still other implementation-specific things
   you'd need to add: GC finalization hooks, exit hooks or an advice
   facility, direct GC calls.

Having said that, porting RDNZL to another Lisp shouldn't be hard if
you're familiar with your implementation: You'll have to find the
right translations for about ten functions/macros in port-xx.lisp and
at least half of them should be trivial.

HTH,
Edi.