Hi guys, Over the weekend I had a look at NativeBoost FFI and I have enjoyed it. I really like this idea of taming the beast from high-level languages. However I ran into some problems with the number of arguments one can pass to a smaltalk method (it turns out to be 15 at max)... That bad for FFI especially when you want to interface with legacy c code without touching the C-stuff (header, object files, etc). In consequence I've hacked my way around this limitation by introduction of a new type of arguments that we can pass to callouts. I call these arguments "in object arguments". The idea isn't new and is very simple, instead of passing 20 arguments to your function just pass one an array with all the arguments you need. Where it turns interesting is that I think we can pass more than just an array we can pass real objects (think about ParameterObject) that hold in their instance variables the arguments we want. lets say that we want to call a function " int function(int x, int y)", now with the NativeBoost wrapper we will get a call something like function_x: x y: y <primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin> ^ self call: #( int function (int x, int y)) the idea is to replace x: y: with only one argument function: anArgument <primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin> ^ self call: #( int function (int anArgument@1, int anArgument@2)) or even function: aPoint <primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin> ^ self call: #( int function (int aPoint@x, int aPoint@y)) Yes this last example breaks the encapsulation a little bit by acceding directly to the instance variable of aPoint... but... well another example will be: function_arg1: a arg2: b <primitive: #primitiveNativeCall module: #NativeBoostPlugin> ^ self call: #( int function (int a@1, int a@2, int b@3, int b@1, int a@6)) Well that's all that I did this weekend. Attached to this mail you can find a file-out of these developments... they include: 1. the idea presented above 2. refactoring of NBFFICallout argument loader creation 3. a small "extension/fix" of the skipSpace method (in spec parser) to skip all separators not just spaces (think about a header definition with tabs) Well that's it folks, enjoy Cheers -- Dr. Ciprian TEODOROV Ingénieur Développement CAO tél : 06 08 54 73 48 mail : ciprian.teodorov@gmail.com www.teodorov.ro