Re: [Java] Function binding

John Moeller wrote:
> The compile-time approach or something similar is necessary to generate 
> the native functions for a Java class; the arguments of the native 
> function have to be declared -- that is, there isn't a "blob" of Java 
> arguments that can be parsed at runtime.  There are a couple of 
> alternatives that I've thought about, but they aren't very attractive 
> (at least to me).

I had a long offline conversation with John about bindings, for context 
we worked together long ago to rewrite the Mac Common Lisp binding code, 
and we came up with a portable way of doing the Java bindings. Briefly...

Langbinding provides a JNI class that manages in a generic way 
forwarding calls back and forth between the Java and C++ sides. When 
loading a C++ module, the Langbinding class reads the class descriptions 
from the C++ module and generates in memory bytecode for the Java side 
of those classes that just calls to the Lanbinding central class to 
package calls and forward through the Langbinging class. The Langbinding 
class loads the freshly generated bytecode classes into the JVM.

The drawback to this approach is the additional translation layer, but 
perhaps this is a reasonable trade off given the extra flexibility 
gained. Now if someone could figure out how to generate bytecode to 
directly call C/C++ function pointers this extra layer could be removed.


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