On 26-Feb-2001, Alastair Reid <reid@cs.utah.edu> wrote:
Many C interfaces contain a significant number of macros. And C is one of the most widely used languages that we want to interface with. So it seems to me that any FFI which aims to provide *good* support for C ought to provide a way of accessing C macros.
Since an explicit goal of the original ffi design was that it would not require a C compiler to implement it and since at least one implementation (STG-Hugs) doesn't require a C compiler, I'd like to see a lot of discussion before we add support for macros to the ffi.
Given the current state of affairs, I think it would be reasonable to only require implementations to support interfacing with C functions, and to not require implementations to support interfacing directly with C macros, variables, enumeration constants, etc. After all, you can only standardize on the lowest common denominator. But I think it would be very nice to standardize on a syntax for doing that, even if supporting that syntax is optional rather than a requirement. I think that in the long run most implementations will want to support it. I also think that it would be nice to standardize on the syntax used to tell the compiler which include files are needed. -- Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit | of excellence is a lethal habit" WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.