[gambit-list] Gerbil: FFI Gerbil modules, why instead of a single Scheme file, a .ssi with (extern ..) + a .scm?

Dimitris Vyzovitis vyzo at hackzen.org
Tue Oct 22 14:11:21 EDT 2019


Mainly because I didn't want to bake in ffi semantics into the expander.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 9:05 PM Adam <adam.mlmb at gmail.com> wrote:

> What's the reason for the need to "drop to Gambit code" (as in enter a
> special non-Gerbil code mode) for FFI code?
>
> Afterall FFI code is just a handful special forms that are straightforward
> [for Gerbil etc.] to process.
>
> (Black Hole had total symmetry between normal Scheme and FFI code, though
> I remember Per complained about that the difference in load semantics
> between non-FFI and FFI code caused him just a bit of headache because
> they're not really symmetrical, in the respect that normal code can be
> |eval|:ed while FFI code cannot.)
>
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2019 at 23:44, Dimitris Vyzovitis <vyzo at hackzen.org> wrote:
>
>> What do you mean why? If you want to write ffi code, you need to drop
>> down to straight gambit code, and that's what being-foreign does.
>> begin-ffi is a macro on top, you can look at its definition in
>> :std/foreign.
>>
>> -- vyzo
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 6:29 PM Adam <adam.mlmb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ah there's also |begin-foreign| and |begin-ffi|, why?
>>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2019 at 23:23, Adam <adam.mlmb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Vyzo,
>>>>
>>>> Browsing Gerbil modules for instance here
>>>> https://github.com/vyzo/gerbil/tree/master/src/std/db I see that FFI
>>>> modules tend to have a non-standard format, instead of just being a file
>>>> whateverclibmodule.scm (or .ss in the Gerbil convention, though .scm is
>>>> supported since last week right) which contains normal Scheme and Scheme
>>>> FFI code interspersed e.g. (define-c-lambda funame ...) implies (export
>>>> funame)
>>>>
>>>> , you have a .scm file and a .ssi file, where the .ssi contains (extern
>>>> funame).
>>>>
>>>> Why is this?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Adam
>>>>
>>>
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