Re: Introspection API

[Andreas Rottmann <a rottmann gmx at>]

Dave Benson <daveb idealab com> writes:

> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:12:30PM -0500, John Ehresman wrote:
>> Dave Benson wrote:
>> >a small c program to generate GValue marshallers from the metadata
>> >seems pretty straightforward.  such marshallers should probably
>> >be compiled at the same time as the metadata... i think.
>> 
>> Yes, but what's the advantage of using compiled marshallers over using 
>> libffi?  Are you concerned about portability?  I wonder if mozilla uses 
>> libffi or if they have their own mechanism for foreign calls.
>
> yeah, portability.
>
> it's not very encouraging that everyone seems to adopt
> their own local copy of libffi.  it means trying out
> glib on new platforms is going to be a pain, subject to
> bugs, etc.  by contrast, generating marshallers is totally
> portable, and we do it anyways, i believe, for signals.
>
FWIW, I have a version (checked out from gcc CVS some time ago,
updated at irregular intervals) of libffi in my arch
repository[0]. I'd gladly accept patches that e.g. implement MSVC
support. By now, the only changes are that it's broken out of the gcc
tree and compilable on its own.

[0] rotty debian org--2005
        http://people.debian.org/~rotty/arch/rotty debian org--2005
    More info on http://yi.org/rotty/Software#gnuarch

Regards, Rotty
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To iterate is human; to recurse, divine.