[squeak-dev] Use FFI to hook into existing C application?

Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r at gmail.com
Tue Aug 17 08:55:32 UTC 2010


Just, :)

Wow.

On Aug 17, 2010, at 1:29 AM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 17 August 2010 03:34, Casey Ransberger <casey.obrien.r at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a C app that I'd like to port to Squeak. I had this crazy idea that I
>> wanted to incrementally replace parts of it bit by bit with Smalltalk, and
>> was entertained by how that seemed roughly impossible. The first thought
>> that crossed my mind was to try to bolt some sort of C-based RPC onto it,
>> and use that as a way to get it to talk to Squeak. Then I thought about FFI,
>> but what I'm reading about that talks specifically about libraries.
>> Here's what I'm wondering:
>> 
>> Would it be insanely painful to make parts of the app into libraries that
>> could get called via FFI? Would it just make more sense to do a scratch
>> implementation? Has anyone ever done something like this before?
>> It's a crazy idea:)
> 
> Not really crazy. I had same goal In 2006 (i think) , first i
> implemented own smalltalk
> interpreter, then using SWIG compiler i implemented Ogre 3D library bindings,
> which generates glue C++ code, reflecting C++ object into smalltalk.
> I was able to allocate new objects, call constructor/destructor,
> access fields, static and virtual functions.
> But then i dropped it, and switched to Squeak, since its having much
> more mature VM,
> comparing to my baby interpreter :)
> 
>> --
>> Casey Ransberger
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
> 



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