Subject: [clisp-list] status of ffcall

From: Stephen Compall <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Nov 26 14:43:02 2002

Greetings CLISP users, I apologize if this is an inappropriate forum
for this question; however, there seems to be no separate ffcall list.

I inquired on the DotGNU developers mailing list about using ffcall
instead of the libffi from the GCC tree for the Portable .NET project,
and here is his reply:

 > It appears that the most recent version of ffcall, 1.8, dates back
 > to January 2001.  Whereas libffi is part of the gcc tree, and has
 > the possibility of being actively maintained by the gcc community.
 >
 > While ffcall seems to be more complete, I would feel happier if
 > there was active maintainence of the project.

I will point him to the CLISP tree on Savannah.  However, I'd like a
more canonical point to stand on: does ffcall meet the requirement of
"active maintenance"?

Please cross-post replies to [email-masked] .

- --
Stephen Compall
Also known as S11001001
DotGNU `Contributor' -- http://dotgnu.org

But how you can encourage greater production of works in the 1920's by
extending copyright today escapes me, unless they have a time machine
somewhere.
	-- RMS, "Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer
		Networks", on retroactive copyright extension by the
		U.S. Government

---

From: Sam Steingold <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Nov 26 15:57:03 2002

> * In message <[email-masked]>
> * On the subject of "[clisp-list] status of ffcall"
> * Sent on Tue, 26 Nov 2002 16:47:23 -0600
> * Honorable Stephen Compall <[email-masked]> writes:
>
> I will point him to the CLISP tree on Savannah.

FFCALL's source tree is hosted on SourceForge.

> However, I'd like a more canonical point to stand on: does ffcall meet
> the requirement of "active maintenance"?

FFCALL is distributed with CLISP and is used by CLISP's FFI.
It has been ported to many platforms (most recently to IBM s/390 by
Gerhard Tonn on 2002-03-24 and to HP-UX assembler by LaMont Jones on
2002-07-01).

The author of FFCALL, Bruno Haible, is the ultimate authority on the
status of FFCALL.

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running RedHat8 GNU/Linux
<http://www.camera.org> <http://www.iris.org.il> <http://www.memri.org/>
<http://www.mideasttruth.com/> <http://www.palestine-central.com/links.html>
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

---

From: Will Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Nov 27 02:16:06 2002

> Gerhard Tonn on 2002-03-24 and to HP-UX assembler by LaMont Jones on

It should be noted that ffcall does not work on the following Linux arches:

arm - assembler syntax is wrong?
hppa - needs rewrite for Linux ABI
mipsel - may just need a recompile

---

From: Bruno Haible <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Nov 27 05:21:04 2002

> >  > the possibility of being actively maintained by the gcc community.

... ffcall is part of the clisp tree and is actively maintained by the
clisp community.

The major differences between ffcall and libffi are:
  - License: ffcall is under GPL, libffi under LGPL.
  - Scope: ffcall does both the callouts to C and the callbacks from C,
    whereas libffi does only the callouts.
  - Functionality: ffcall also works for many simple 'struct' types.

Bruno