<sect1>
<title>Purpose</title>
<para> This reference guide describes
- &uffi;, a Lisp package that provides persistent cross-implementation
- support of C-language compatible libraries.
+ &uffi;, a package that provides a cross-implementation
+ interface from Common Lisp to C-language compatible libraries.
</para>
</sect1>
<para>
Every Common Lisp implementation has
a method for interfacing to C-language compatible
- libraries. Unfortunately, these method vary widely amongst
- implementations. Currently, to support multiple implementations,
- developers must write a different interface library for each Common
- Lisp implementation.
+ libraries. These methods are often termed a
+ <emphasis>Foreign Function Library Interface</emphasis>
+ (&ffi;). Unfortunately, these methods vary widely
+ amongst
+ implementations, thus preventing the writing of a portable FFI to a
+particular C-library.
</para>
<para>
&uffi; gathers a common subset of functionality between Common Lisp
<sect1>
<title>Supported Implementations</title>
- <para> The primary tested and supported platforms for &uffi; are:
+ <para>The primary tested and supported platforms for &uffi; are:
</para>
<itemizedlist mark="opencircle">
- <listitem><para>&acl; v6.1 on Redhat Linux 7.2 and Microsoft Windows.</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>&acl; v6.1 and v6.2.beta on Redhat Linux 7.2, Debian Woody,
+FreeBSD 4.5, Solaris v2.8, and Microsoft Windows.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>&lw; v4.2 on Redhat Linux 7.2 and Microsoft Windows.</para></listitem>
- <listitem><para>&cmucl; 18c on Redhat Linux 7.2.</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>&cmucl; 18d-pre on Redhat Linux 7.2, FreeBSD 4.5, and Solaris 2.8</para></listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ <para>Beta code is included with &uffi; for
+ </para>
+ <itemizedlist mark="opencircle">
+ <listitem><para>&mcl; with MacOSX</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect1>
<sect1>
- <title>Design Overview</title>
- <para>
- &uffi; was designed as a cross-implementation compatible
- <emphasis>Foreign Function Interface</emphasis>. Necessarily,
- only a common subset of functionality can be
- provided. Likewise, not every optimization for that a specific
- implementation provides can be supported. Wherever possible,
- though, implementation-specific optimizations are invoked.
- </para>
+ <title>Design</title>
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Overview</title>
+ <para>
+ &uffi; was designed as a cross-implementation
+ compatible <emphasis>Foreign Function Interface</emphasis>.
+ Necessarily,
+ only a common subset of functionality can be
+ provided. Likewise, not every optimization for that a specific
+ implementation provides can be supported. Wherever possible,
+ though, implementation-specific optimizations are invoked.
+ </para>
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Priorities</title>
+ <para>
+ The design of &uffi; is dictated by the order of these priorities:
+ </para>
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Code using &uffi; must operate correctly on all
+ supported implementations.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Take advantage of implementation-specific optimizations. Ideally,
+ there will not a situation where an implementation-specific
+ &ffi; will be chosen due to lack of optimizations in &uffi;.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Provide a simple interface to developers using
+&uffi;. This priority is quite a bit lower than the above priorities.
+This lower priority is manifest by programmers having to pass types in
+pointer and array dereferencing, needing to use
+<constant>cstring</constant> wrapper functions, and the use of
+ensure-char-character and ensure-char-integer functions. My hope is
+that the developer inconvenience will be outweighed by the generation
+of optimized code that is cross-implementation compatible.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>
projects / uffi.git / blobdiff