[fetter-devel] Request for comments on new interface

[Frank Goenninger - PRION Consulting]

Rayiner,

Am 08.10.2005 um 04:33 schrieb Rayiner Hashem:

> The user interface for Verrazano is a bit of a kludge at the moment,
> and I've been working recently on refactoring the code to both enable
> a more sensical and straightforward UI, and also to refactor the
> internals to allow better user control in certain places. This work is
> a prerequisite for things like Visual C++ support and multiple backend
> support. Moreover, I consder a rework of the UI to be a prerequisite
> for a 1.0 release.
>
> Right now, what I have is a procedural interface to the generator's
> internals. What I need is a good way of allowing the user to specify a
> configuration. The idea is to dump the special .binding file, as Kenny
> suggested, and go with a set of macros. My first thoughts are to make
> generate.lisp look like this:
>
> (verrazano:defbinding cairo
>   (:name "cairo-library")
>   (:nicknames "cairo")
>   (:include "cairo/cairo.h"
>             "cairo/cairo-pdf.h"))
>
> (verrazano:defhost winvc++
>   (:compiler :vc++)     ; or :g++
>   (:gccxml-path "")
>   (:gccxml-command "gccxml")
>   (:temp-directory "/tmp"))
>
> (verrazano:deftarget cffi-lispy
>   (:backend :cffi)
>   (:name-style :lisp-style)   ; or :c-style
>   (:search-mode :strict))    ; or :helpful (better name???)
>
> (verrazano:create-binding
>   :binding cairo
>   :host winvc++
>   :target cffi-lispy
>   "testsuite/cairo/cairo-library.lisp")
>
> Basically, the specification of the configuration is split up into a
> binding describing the header files to incorporate, a host describing
> the host platform, and a target describing what backend to use and
> what code generation options to enable. Common hosts like "winvc++" or
> "lingcc" would be built into Verrazano, so you could pass something
> like "verrazano:winvc++" to CREATE-BINDING, without having to redefine
> it each time.
>
> I'd love to recieve any comments that would help me make this
> interface better (or suggest to me to scrap it entirely and do
> something else :)

I actually like it. It's clean and precise IMHO. I often do things  
this way also:

(verrazano:create-binding
     :binding ((:name "cairo-library")
                      (:nicknames "cairo")
                      (:include "cairo/cairo.h" "cairo/cairo-pdf.h"))
     :host (( ...)))

- you get the idea, I assume. As this should be supported by your  
macros already I'd love to go with it.

Thanks!

Cheers,
     Frank