Re: FFI again

[Stefan Monnier]

> That's not FFI.  Are you confusing runtime loading of DSOs with a
> foreign function interface (FFI)?

No, I'm not, but indeed what I propose is a kind of middle ground: in
normal FFI you describe the external library's ABI in some kind of
domain specific language (DSL) that is then interpreted/compiled into
wrappers to massage the data in a form understandable by the
host language.

So what I propose is to use "runtime loading of DSO" as a poor man's FFI
where the DSL of the FFI is C and where the compilation of this "DSL" is
handled by a C compiler.

The only technical difference between what I propose and typical "runtime
loading of DSOs" is that the system also handles running the C compiler,
so you can download the TedZ-OpenPGP package from ELPA and install it
(provided you have a C compiler on your machine).


        Stefan