Stef, You are clear, and (IMHO) correct. We need good ability to call out (FWIW, Alien's ability here has been questioned, fairly or not??), good callbacks (FFI is seriously weak here), and at least some ability to make calls on separate OS threads to protect the image from being locked by something that does not return - we are currently helpless on the latter point.
Bill -----Original Message----- From: pharo-project-boun...@lists.gforge.inria.fr [mailto:pharo-project-boun...@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Stéphane Ducasse Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 11:13 AM To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] FFI in 1.1 > > yes communication with C library. so this is just a tool too. > > > > Exactly. It is a tool. Not a dev tool in my opinion.In such way, SqueakDBX > is also a tool. A tool to persist in a relational database. Mariano FFI/ALIEN is ***REALLY*** important to get the possibility to call and write code in smalltalk as mentioned by john so this is more central (closer to core) than openDBX or refactoring browser. Look at lua... why lua is cool because he can be embeded seamlessly in C and call C. So if we do not put pressure on FFI to support callback well or ALIEN then we will stay this language that has problem to interact with the outside world. This is why having FFI in pharo-dev is important. We should be able to call mac native menu. Of course we should pay attention that we rely too much on C library but the world is getting more complex and writing everything in smalltalk is also costly. Not FFI/ALIEN can reduce our dependency to C compilation and C-writing so this is already an important step. Am I clear? Stef _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
