Re: How CLSQL finds and loads foreign libraries

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 18:28:56 +0200, "Hoehle, Joerg-Cyril" <[email protected]> wrote:

> What do you propose to do with all that UFFI-using code ou there
> which uses uffi:find-foreign-library?

Leave it unchanged.  In my proposed version full absolute pathnames
will still be accepted as before, so old code should work.  The new
thing is just that strings like "foo.dll" won't be rejected - as is
the case now.

> So are you sure this is very portable?

I'm only sure about the systems I tested - see my original posting.
When I wrote my proposal I didn't even know that CLISP was so close to
being supported by UFFI.

> And it doesn't free from the problem of finding the correct set of
> #+xyz to extract the needed suffix (.dll (even on #+unix but
> #-cygwin), .so, and I've seen .dylib somewhere).

Sure.  Thinks won't start to work automagically.  But they will at
least improve a bit.  The reason I started this whole thread was that
on Windows a great library like CLSQL is virtually unusable unless you
either organize your files like Kevin or modify the source code
locally.

I think this should be changed in a way that loading a foreign library
with UFFI isn't orders of magnitudes more difficult than using the
native FFIs of AllegroCL, LispWorks, and friends.

We should start worrying about "esoteric" platforms like HP/UX once we
actually have UFFI users there.  Didn't I just recently read that
Debian will stop supporting a lot of architectures?  I guess they have
a /lot/ more manpower than the CL open source community.

Cheers,
Edi.