[Vm-dev] Merging FFI and Alien

[Luc Fabresse]

2016-01-24 13:56 GMT+01:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm at gmail.com>:

>
>
> On 24 Jan 2016, at 13:38, Luc Fabresse <luc.fabresse at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Esteban,
>
> Question: why not "just" introducing Alien's callbacks in FFI and rename
> it (e.g. FFI-callbacks)?
>
> That would be simpler, no?
>
>
> no is not :)
> Callbacks works with Aliens, who are different than regular
> ExternalAddresses, then you need Aliens i.
> In the future, that could be a project (to modify callback part of
> plugin)… but for now faster approach is what I’m describing :)
>

I was suspecting that I forgot part of this complicated story ;-)
Thanks for clarifying,

Luc


>
> cheers,
> Esteban
>
>
> - no Alien's history in FFI repo
> - not the full Alien's code (callout mechanism, ...) in FFI codebase
>
> - ...
>
> Cheers,
>
> #Luc
>
> 2016-01-24 12:57 GMT+01:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm at gmail.com>:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Recently I’ve been talking with Eliot and we came to the conclusion that
>> FFI and Alien repositories needs to be merged.
>> Our rational is that 1) both are different ways of doing the same (often
>> with same primitives) and much more important 2) Alien contains the the “de
>> facto” callback mechanism supported by the VM.
>> Keeping them separated and treated as two different things is negative
>> and an important source of confusion for people willing to do FFI this days.
>> So, here is my proposal (already talked with Eliot).
>>
>> 1) unify http://source.squeak.org/FFI and
>> http://www.squeaksource.com/Alien into http://source.squeak.org/FFI
>> That means copying into FFI repo all Alien history.
>>
>> 2) Rename Alien package into FFI-Alien (extract the Alien-Win32 category
>> into its own package)
>>
>> 3) Create a ConfigurationOfFFI who takes properly FFI and FFI-Alien, etc.
>>
>> That means also deprecate Alien project in squeaksource (which usually is
>> just put a WARNING text in home page :P)
>>
>> So… if nobody has a anything against this plan, I will do it next week :)
>>
>> cheers!
>> Esteban
>
>
>
>
>
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