Re: guile-gobject/g-wrap status update

[Rob Browning]

Andreas Rottmann <address@hidden> writes:

> [BTW: There seem to be two guile-gtk mailing lists ATM - I guess
> people should migrate to the one at GNU...]
>
> I'm ATM working at implementing "glueless" wrapping for g-wrap,
> i.e. instead of using a dedicated C wrapper for each wrapped function
> creating an applicable smob that invokes a general marshaller which in
> turn calls the C function via libffi.

Interesting.  A couple of questions come to mind.  First, how portable
is libffi?  Will it cover all the existing architectures?  Also, do we
know what the overhead's likely to be?  I suppose the performance
argument could go either way when comparing to the existing approach
since the existing one-function-per-wrapper approach may well have
poorer interactions with the memory hierarchy.  In any case, I do want
to preserve the ability for people who want to, to be able to have
close to minimal ffcall overhead using g-wrap.  When calling from
interpreted languages, you may have a lot more leeway before you
noticably affect performance, but in the long run, I'm hoping guile
will also provide some form of compilation.

On a related front, I've decided to just use CVS at savannah, so I
should be setting that up over the next week (plus or minus -- I have
family coming to visit).  It also probably makes sense to have a place
where those interested can discuss "what should happen next" with
g-wrap.  I'm happy to have that discussion on an existing list if that
would be appropriate, or to create a new one.  I've had some ideas I'd
like to discuss, and to compare and contrast (to the extent that they
overlap) with the above.

Thanks

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org; previously @cs.utexas.edu
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