Hello all.

The main direction of work during last days, were introducing a new
function formal specification format.

With new format, NativeBoost jumps on a next level of flexibility and
much less error prone to use!!

Here is the old format:

primGetModuleFileName: hModule with: lpFileName with: nSize
	<primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin>

	^ NBFFICallout
		apiCall: #(DWORD 'GetModuleFileNameA' ("in" HMODULE "out"LPCSTR "in"DWORD) )
		module: #Kernel32
		options: #( - coerceNilToNull )

and here is new:

primGetModuleFileName: hModule with: lpFileName with: nSize
	<primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin>

	^ NBFFICallout
		apiCall: #(
			DWORD GetModuleFileName (
				HMODULE hModule,
				LPTSTR lpFilename,
				DWORD nSize))
		module: #Kernel32
		options: #( - coerceNilToNull )

A new format matching very closely to C syntax.. so , for most C
functions you can just do a copy-paste!

Also, see that formal spec includes an argument names. They are not a
dummy ones, but instead should match the argument names of method.
In that way, the formal spec can check the argument names and also,
takes in account their order on ST stack.
So, you can push arguments in different order as you specified in
smalltalk method.
But that's not all.
Besides a formal argument names, a new format also accepts  constants
, instance variables and special variable - self.

Here:

alloc: numberOfBytes
	<primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin>

	^ NBFFICallout apiCall: #( LPVOID HeapAlloc (self , 0 , SIZE_T
numberOfBytes) ) module: #Kernel32

a windoze function takes 3 arguments
LPVOID HeapAlloc( HANDLE hHeap, DWORD dwFlags, SIZE_T dwBytes );

but your method takes just one, while other two is 'self'  and 0 constant.
Instead of just integer literal, you can also use a class variables or
pool variables, to make things more convenient and readable:

zalloc: numberOfBytes
	"same as #alloc: but additionally zero-fill the allocated memory"
	<primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin>

	^ NBFFICallout apiCall:
		#( LPVOID HeapAlloc (self , HEAP_ZERO_MEMORY , SIZE_T numberOfBytes) )
		module: #Kernel32


And the last thing, is instance variable access.

Point>>nbX

	<primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin >
	
	^ NBFFICallout cdecl: #( sbyte (long x) ) emitCall: [:gen |
		gen asm pop: gen asm EAX ]

here, primitive reads x ivar of Point instance, as a 'long' C value,
but on return, converts it to a signed byte value, so:

(127 at 5) nbX 127
(128 at 5) nbX -128
(-200 at 5) nbX 56
(5000 at 5) nbX -120

P.S. Thanks Henrik for a suggestion to change the format! It is now roxxx! :)

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.