Re: [ANN] nyacc 0.82.0 released

[Matt Wette <matt.wette@gmail.com>]

> On Sep 10, 2017, at 8:37 AM, Matt Wette <matt.wette@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Nyacc 0.82.0 has been released
> 
> In this version I have cleaned up more of the FFI Helper.  Note:
> 1) In the distribution, you will see example .ffi files in examples/ffi/.
> 2) use of the FFI Helper required the bytestructures package, available from:
>   	https://github.com/TaylanUB/scheme-bytestructures
> 3) ffi/cairo.ffi is converted to ffi/cairo.scm by the command
> 	$ guild compile-ffi ffi/cairo.ffi
> 4) It works on my mac.  I don't know what else: the code needs to have access
>   to files in odd places (e.g., lib/gcc/..../include
> 5) If you do `make install', and have bytestructures in the SITE_SCM_DIR, then 
>   this should work:
> 	$ make install-ffi-help
> 	...
> 	+++ warning: the FFI Helper is experimental
> 	ffi-help: can't do varargs (yet)
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/scm/ffi/sqlite3.scm'
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/go/ffi/sqlite3.go'
> 	+++ warning: the FFI Helper is experimental
> 	ffi-help: can't do varargs (yet)
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/scm/ffi/libgit2.scm'
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/go/ffi/libgit2.go'
> 	+++ warning: the FFI Helper is experimental
> 	ffi-help: can't do varargs (yet)
> 	ffi-help: no FFI float-type for "long double"
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/scm/ffi/glib.scm'
> 	wrote `/var/tmp/zz/go/ffi/glib.go'

Some additional notes: 
6) compile-ffi and compile may take significant time.  I have seen compile-ffi take time on 
   include files that have a large number of re-includes.  Nyacc does not try to skip re-reading
   include files (like gcc does).  And compile takes a long time because the .scm files can be
   huge.  On my machine, ffi/gio.scm turns out to be about 24 K lines and the gio.go file is 8 MB.
7) In examples I show that passing strings to function is done via (foo (string->pointer "abc")).
   Using string->pointer is not required: unwrap~pointer will now deal with this.
8) the FFI Helper files .scm files are distributed in SCM_DIR -- not under nyacc/ :
   + scripts/compile-ffi.scm is the compiler driver invoked by `guild'
   + system/ffi-help-rt.scm is the FFI Helper runtime (macros for defining types, etc)
   + ffi/ is the conventional place to host .ffi files, so ffi/glib.scm is code for (ffi glib)
9) I will need to look into how to add some needed types in guile FFI: intptr_t, long long, long
   double.

Matt