Laurent,

I am starting to understand your pain, or at least how it manifests itself in my world. ��First, the search path for libraries (Unix VM) can be a problem, not because of how it works, but because it does not tell me what it is trying to do. ��IMHO, any time the vm translates something (library name to search path, COM port name to number or vice versa), it should describe what it did, perhaps only if the attempt to open/load/whatever fails (if a load works, I'm probably happy and not looking). ��I have been known to hack the vm to add such tracing - syslog, stdout - wherever, but somewhere.

Mangled names are another topic, but I do NOT consider this to be a Squeak/Pharo/VM failing of any type. ��The author of the library failed to use extern "C" - simple as that. ��

The most recent encounter I had with this was on Windows, and I left behind the following comment:

�� �� �� ��The conspicuous (in hindsight) absence of extern "C" from
�� �� �� ��the header file comes at a price: the names are mangled.
�� �� �� ��Enter pexports.exe and some copy/paste with periodic
�� �� �� ��acerbic remarks.

Translation: if you have not done this, consider using pexports.exe to obtain the true exported symbol names, and put them (with ?@, etc. intact) in your FFI definitions. ��HTH.

Bill

________________________________________
From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr [pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of laurent laffont [laurent.laffont@gmail.com]

Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 2:34 PM

To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 8:06 PM, Schwab,Wilhelm K <bschwab@anest.ufl.edu<mailto:bschwab@anest.ufl.edu>> wrote:
No real agenda either way here, except to say that we almost have that in FFI. ��If you know enough to make the call, do you not know enough to write the FFI wrapper? ��Just asking. ��Having stirred the broth, I'll shut up and learn :)



My last attempts:
http://forum.world.st/Re-Z3950-on-OSX-module-yaz3-not-found-tp3161332p3161332.html
http://forum.world.st/Re-FFI-crashes-VM-on-Linux-was-Z3950-on-OSX-module-yaz3-not-found-td3163001.html

Any help appreciated.

Laurent.




________________________________________

From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr<mailto:pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr> [pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr<mailto:pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr>] On Behalf Of laurent laffont [laurent.laffont@gmail.com<mailto:laurent.laffont@gmail.com>]

Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 1:47 PM

To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr<mailto:Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr>

Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 7:25 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua@gmail.com<mailto:siguctua@gmail.com><mailto:siguctua@gmail.com<mailto:siguctua@gmail.com>>> wrote:
On 6 May 2011 18:45, laurent laffont <laurent.laffont@gmail.com<mailto:laurent.laffont@gmail.com><mailto:laurent.laffont@gmail.com<mailto:laurent.laffont@gmail.com>>> wrote:

> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua@gmail.com<mailto:siguctua@gmail.com><mailto:siguctua@gmail.com<mailto:siguctua@gmail.com>>> wrote:
>>
>> Is it works because someone already provided a bindings for libraries
>> you mention,
>> or you did it by yourself?
>
> Have just used ctypes:
>>>> import ctypes
>>>> import ctypes.util
>>>> ctypes.util.find_library("yaz")
> '/usr/local/lib/libyaz.dylib'
>>>> yaz = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary("libyaz.dylib")

>>>> con = yaz.ZOOM_connection_new("z3950.loc.gov<http://z3950.loc.gov><http://z3950.loc.gov>", 7090);

oh cool.. give me a 5 minutes to load external library, look up the
random symbol exported by it
and make a call to it with random number of arguments, and expect it
won't crash.

Works outta box! Cool.

Now serious. How about spending time writing a bindings for that library?
Where you have properly organized classes/interfaces, error handling
and other stuff.
No takers?

Seriously, if you want such kind of shitty interface, which allows you
to call arbitrary function with arbitrary arguments
without any argument type checking, i can write it for you.


Do it, please do it. Seriously. Thanks

Laurent.



> Laurent

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.