Re: [Gcl-devel] Re: Items in the mod directory using packages and theFFI

[Mike Thomas]

Hi Luis.

> "Mike Thomas" <address@hidden> writes:
> > Incidentally, I think that we should seriously consider supporting CFFI
in
> > 2.7.0 if we can find the resources - it will open up some interesting
> > packages for GCL users, notably a wxWidgets binding which has already
been
> > ported to other CL implementations.
>
> I started such a port back in August but gave up at some point when GCL
> wouldn't compile the portable bits of CFFI. I do not know if GCL can
> compile them atm.
>
> You can see what I came up with here:
> http://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/darcs/cffi/src/cffi-gcl.lisp
>
> It suffered some bitrot and my approach to this port might have not been
> the best since I'm not familiar with GCL.
>
> Anyway, any GCL user/developer is most welcomed to pick the port up and
> update it. We'll be happy to answer any questions in the cffi-devel
> mailing list that might come up in that process.

Thanks for that.

It's gratifying to see that you not only had a go at porting CFFI to GCL but
that you are also taking the trouble to monitor our mailing list!

We suffer from an acute man-power shortage on this project so it remains to
be seen what happens regarding CFFI as we tend to focus on the main areas of
application for GCL (Maxima, ACL2 and Axiom spring to mind) and "we are"
(that is, "Camm is") presently working hard to optimise the compiler and
improve ANSI CL compliance.

I think all of those projects would greatly benefit in the long run from the
libraries that a GCL CFFI (and so also UFFI) would bring into scope and I'm
sure Camm would to some extent agree with me on this.

As a matter of interest darcs just complained when I tried to update my old
cffi repository:

  C:\darcs\cffi>darcs pull
  darcs failed:  Not a repository:
http://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/darcs/cffi

Cheers

Mike Thomas.