Re: porting

[Chuck Robey]

Helge Hess wrote:

> On 5. Okt 2005, at 17:33 Uhr, Armando Di Cianno wrote:
>
> > WRT GNUstep, I've had varying luck with both, possibly leaning toward
> > the sentiment that ffcall is more stable than libffi (again, wrt
> > GNUstep).
>
>
> Isn't libffi included in GCC? What about using the one coming with  
> the compiler, this is probably best maintained and a dependency is  
> removed?
You're guessing here ...

The facts as I've been able to determine them so far are, to my own 
inspection:

1) libffi not ported to Zaurus using OpenBSD.  It has been ported to the 
Linux implementation of Zaurus, but not yet any of the BSD's.

2) In my own investigation, the LInux stuff is extremely unstable, far 
far less stable than OpenBSD.  I have been running OpenBSD in the last 
60 days, and it's just a nicer platform so far.  Things like power 
suspend, and various uisb stuff, work well.  The onboard compiler is 
stable.  Porting extra gcc pieces will be a part of this porting task.

2) the README file in the libffi seems to be everything that I could ask 
for, as far as programming notes to assist my porting job, so as to get 
OpenBSD to work with libffi (the one in gcc, yes).

3) I heard on the net that the ffcall libs are better documented.  If 
so, I haven't yet seen this to be true.

4) I asked folks for any solid reason why ffcall might be prefereable to 
libffi, but (disappointingly) I only got replies of the type "in my 
opinion, it was more stable".  No comparisons of API, nothing concrete.  
I've just about decided to port libffi, and will  in the net day or so, 
unless this email garners something important to change my mind.

> Greets,
>   Helge