[cffi-devel] Re: [fetter-devel] Quick CFFI update

[Kenny Tilton]

C Y wrote:

>--- Kenny Tilton <ktilton at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>>No worries :-).  Irrelevant discussion is often a severe drag on
>>>getting stuff done,
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>The funny thing is that I also want project developers to get input
>>from the community via c.l.l, Planet Lisp, and #Lisp. Talk about a
>>potential for irrelevant discussion.... :)
>>    
>>
>
>Oh, my. ;-)  Well, no question there are a lot of smart people there.
>
That is my thinking. The expected noise can simply be ignored, a feature 
of Usenet too few take advantage of.

>Here's what I've dug up so far (links provided for the lazy, which will
>be me when I get the time to read all this):
>
That's the stuff.

>Clisp:
>http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes/dffi.html - is this the new spiffy one? 
>

Yes.

>Nice.  Oh, I had a question about Lilac (is that on topic or reserved
>for later?) 
>
Lilac got beat out by Fetter, which will be doing the autogen thing.

> Auto-generation of bindings would be a godsend for people
>wanting to use FFIs, but the first thought that came to my mind was
>"how do I know what's available to be called, and what call syntax got
>auto-generated?"
>
Fetter will generate a Lisp source file of bindings, so you can just 
peruse that to see how the Lisp turned out. But, yes, in the end the 
documentation of the C library will be what you need. What gets 
interesting is how things like booleans are handled. The C zero/non-zero 
becomes the Lisp nil/non-nil and vice versa. What will likely happen is 
that the FFI will generate two entry points, one without auto-conversion 
of booleans and strings, etc, and one with. So anyone using these tools 
to get to C/C++ libraries will need to read a little doc to get up to 
speed on that.

>using something like Albert to absorb any C++ comments and attach them
>to auto-generated documentation of each resulting lisp functions
>arguments and limitations? 
>
I for one did think of that, but I am not sure how well Albert (whatever 
that is) output would meld with gccxml output. This might be an exercise 
for another day.

-- 
Kenny

Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film

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