I have put Release Candidate 3 up at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/haskell/ffi/
Changes wrt to the last version are the following:
* 3.2: Clarified the description of foreign types; so far, `IO ()' was
strictly speaking not included as a valid return type.
* 4.1.5: New section discussing the traps & pitfalls of type promotion with
C bindings.
* 5.8: Clarified documentation for `MarshalAlloc.free'.
* 5.8: Added `MarshalAlloc.realloc'.
Moreover, I would like to draw your attention to the
following points, which we should solve before I post the
next version to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]':
* Olaf Chitil has pointed out some unclear points wrt to ()
and IO () as a result type in foreign declarations in the
previous version of the Addendum. I have edited Section
3.2 to improve this, but you may want to check out that
the new version meets your expectations.
* I have added Section 4.1.5 as a consequence of the recent
discussion on argument type promotion on this list. It
seemed that everybody agreed what the FFI should do, but
that a detailed explanation in the specification is
needed, so I have added one. Please check whether you
find it sufficient.
* I think, for reasons of orthogonality `MarshalAlloc'
should include
realloc :: Storable b => Ptr a -> IO (Ptr b)
I have added this in the document. Let me know if anybody
disagrees with this.
* There is the open question, raised by SPJ, of whether we
like to have something like
import_entity -> [String]
export_entity -> [String]
See my message from yesterday.
* Sigbjorn, while adding support for OS threads to GHC, has
introduced a new safety mode `threadsafe'. It seems
worthwhile to include this into the Addendum. On systems
that don't support OS threads, `threadsafe' might behave
like `safe', but at least code that uses `threadsafe'
would still be valid on other systems. The semantics is
as follows:
unsafe must not call back
safe may call back; if it blocks outside Haskell,
the whole Haskell system blocks
threadsafe on systems supporting OS threads, the
Haskell runtime will not block, even if the
call blocks;
must call an OS-thread safe procedure
('safe' remains the default.)
If there are no objections, I will add the latter two
changes to the FFI Addendum.
Cheers,
Manuel
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