Hi,

I'd like to host my new project CFFI at cl.net.

Description:

(Sorry if this is way more detail than you need, this will probably become the README once I'm done writing it :-)

CFFI, the Common Foreign Function Interface, purports to be a portable foreign function interface, similar in spirit to UFFI.

Unlike UFFI, CFFI requires only a small set of low-level functionality from the Lisp implementation, such as calling a foreign function by name, allocating foreign memory, and dereferencing pointers.

More complex tasks like accessing foreign structures can be done in portable "user space" code, making use of the low-level memory access operations defined by the implementation-specific bits. (This is not yet implemented, however).

CFFI also aims to be more efficient than UFFI when possible. In particular, UFFI's use of aliens in CMUCL and SBCL can be tricky to get right. CFFI avoids this by using system area pointers directly instead of alien objects. All foreign function definitions and uses should compile without alien-value compiler notes in CMUCL/SBCL.

CFFI is being developed initially against SBCL and OpenMCL. Support for CMUCL should be straightforward. From cursory inspection of the documentation it should be possible to support Allegro CL, but a Lispworks port may be difficult without vendor support. Whether CLISP can be supported easily is currently unknown.

Project Name: cffi Developer: jamesjb "James Bielman" License: MIT

Thanks!

James