[Ecls-list] MSVC FFI problems

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Dec 30, 2007 2:14 AM, Tomi Neste <tomi.neste at netikka.fi> wrote:
> Greetings. I'm having some problems with the latest MSVC compiled ECL and
> UFFI:
>
> 1) When compiling a file with (UFFI:LOAD-FOREIGN-LIBRARY "some.dll") in it
> the compiler tries to link with the .dll of the library which won't work.
> If the "some.dll" is changed to "some.lib" it compiles but won't load.
> Everything works fine is I use

When using the static FFI, that is the one that uses a compiler to
produce the foreign calls, you should use the *.lib version. You must
then _compile_ your lisp file and load the compiled version into the
interpreter. There should be no problem with that.

If you activate the dynamic FFI, using (setf si:*use-dffi* t), you may
use the *.dll file directly in interpreted code. The problem with this
is that function calls are generated by some assembly code which is
not portable.

> 2) There is something funny happening when I try to declare foreign
> functions with :FLOAT arguments. Short example:
> [...]
> When I compile and load the files I get seemingly random results from
> FFI-TEST, with occasional DIVIDE-BY-ZERO. Any clues?

I assume you are using the compiled version of the FFI (that is
*use-dffi* = nil) Then you have to provide ECL with a C header with
the right declarations. This redundancy is used to ensure things
compile fine, as it is not always enough with the information that
UFFI supplies. At the top of your lisp file, just add
   #+ecl (ffi::c-lines "#include \"ffi_test.h\"")
where ffi_test.h is the header for your foreign file containing all
function declarations you may need.

Juanjo

-- 
Facultad de Fisicas, Universidad Complutense,
Ciudad Universitaria s/n Madrid 28040 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com