Newer
Older
-*- Text -*-
This is a collection of TODO items and ideas in no particular order.
### Testing
-> Test uffi-compat with more UFFI libraries.
-> Write more FOREIGN-GLOBALS.SET.* tests.
-> Write benchmarks comparing CFFI vs. native FFIs and also demonstrating
performance of each platform.
-> Write more STRUCT.ALIGNMENT.* tests (namely involving the :LONG-LONG
and :UNSIGNED-LONG-LONG types) and test them in more ABIs.
-> Run tests with the different kinds of shared libraries available on
MacOS X.
### Ports
-> Finish GCL port, port to MCL.
-> Update Corman port. [2007-02-22 LO]
### Features
-> Implement a declarative interface for FOREIGN-FUNCALL-PTR, similar to
DEFCUN/FOREIGN-FUNCALL.
-> Implement the proposed interfaces (see doc/).
-> Extend FOREIGN-SLOT-VALUE and make it accept multiple "indices" for
directly accessing structs inside structs, arrays inside structs, etc...
-> Implement EXPLAIN-FOREIGN-SLOT-VALUE.
-> Implement :in/:out/:in-out for DEFCFUN (and FOREIGN-FUNCALL?).
-> Add support for multiple memory allocation schemes (like CLISP), namely
support for allocating with malloc() (so that it can be freed on the C
side)>
-> Extend DEFCVAR's symbol macro in order to handle memory (de)allocation
automatically (see CLISP).
-> Implement byte swapping routines (see /usr/include/linux/byteorder)
-> Warn about :void in places where it doesn't make sense.
### Underspecified Semantics
-> (setf (mem-ref ptr <aggregate-type> offset) <value>)
-> Review the interface for coherence across Lisps with regard to
behaviour in "exceptional" situations. Eg: threads, dumping cores,
accessing foreign symbols that don't exist, etc...
-> On Lispworks a Lisp float is a double and therefore won't necessarily
fit in a C float. Figure out a way to handle this.
-> Allegro: callbacks' return values.
-> Lack of uniformity with regard to pointers. Allegro: 0 -> NULL.
CLISP/Lispworks: NIL -> NULL.
-> Some lisps will accept a lisp float being passed to :double
and a lisp double to :float. We should either coerce on lisps that
don't accept this or check-type on lisps that do. Probably the former
is better since on lispworks/x86 double == float.
### Possible Optimizations
-> More compiler macros on some of the CFFI-SYS implementations.
-> Optimize UFFI-COMPAT when the vector stuff is implemented.
-> Being able to declare that some C int will always fit in a Lisp
fixnum. Allegro has a :fixnum ftype and CMUCL/SBCL can use
(unsigned-byte 29) others could perhaps behave like :int?
-> An option for defcfun to expand into a compiler macro which would
allow the macroexpansion-time translators to look at the forms
-> CLISP FASL portability is broken. Fix this by placing LOAD-TIME-VALUE
forms in the right places and moving other calculations to load-time.
(eg: calculating struct size/alignment.) Ideally we'd only move them
to load-time when we actually care about fasl portability.
(defmacro maybe-load-time-value (form)
(if <we care about fasl portability>
`(load-time-value ,form)
form))
-> cffi-tests.asd's :c-test-lib component is causing the whole testsuite
to be recompiled everytime. Figure that out.
-> The (if (constantp foo) (do-something-with (eval foo)) ...) pattern
used in many places throughout the code is apparently not 100% safe.
-> On ECL platforms without DFFI we need to build a non-linked version
of libtest.
-> foreign-enum-keyword/value should have their own error condition?
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.cffi.devel/975> [2007-02-22 LO]
### Documentation
-> Fill the missing sections in the CFFI User Manual.
-> Update the CFFI-SYS Specification.
-> have two versions of the manual on the website
### CFFI-Grovel
-> Look into making the C output more concise.
### Other
-> Type-checking pointer interface.