[Pharo-project] FFI versus Alien versus NativeBoost (was FFI versus Aloen)
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What shortcomings?
I believe there are three outlined in the description on SqueakSource: "It supports faster call sequence, return code setting, and callbacks to execute smalltalk code from the FFI routine." There's something about that last one: callbacks. I think FFI gives a return value, but you can't create a callback.
NativeBoost is faster than FFI, but NB is a whole other ball-of-wax, and I'd like to support it eventually as well as FFI/Alien.
Another way to look at it is via what Goran said: in terms of age. FFI is oldest and most well known. Alien less so. NativeBoost is Igor's project and I don't think is widely adopted yet. (Igor's going to show up and squish me like a bug, but oh well... ) Igor did say something interesting about FFI versus plugins at Deep Into Smalltalk. I believe he wrote Native Boost because he was tired of endlessly recompiling vms with plugins. I don't think there is any standard vm with NB in it, which means that's exactly what you're going to need to do to use NB. FFI has a reputation as something that's a bit touchy. It looks a little easier than it is. The prudent choice would be for you to use FFI and curb your ambition away from Alien or NB until later. There are lots more examples of FFI around than Alien and NB combined. OpenSophie has copious code examples. http://opensophie.org/ I have to stop now. I'm only making it worse for when Igor arrives... must go! :p Chris
On 10 June 2011 06:58, Chris Cunnington <smalltalktelevision@gmail.com> wrote:
What shortcomings?
I believe there are three outlined in the description on SqueakSource:
"It supports faster call sequence, return code setting, and callbacks to execute smalltalk code from the FFI routine."
There's something about that last one: callbacks. I think FFI gives a return value, but you can't create a callback.
NativeBoost is faster than FFI, but NB is a whole other ball-of-wax, and I'd like to support it eventually as well as FFI/Alien.
Another way to look at it is via what Goran said: in terms of age. FFI is oldest and most well known. Alien less so. NativeBoost is Igor's project and I don't think is widely adopted yet. (Igor's going to show up and squish me like a bug, but oh well... )
Igor did say something interesting about FFI versus plugins at Deep Into Smalltalk. I believe he wrote Native Boost because he was tired of endlessly recompiling vms with plugins. I don't think there is any standard vm with NB in it, which means that's exactly what you're going to need to do to use NB.
Indeed. You need to build own VM. The Last One :) This is not a problem to me - i can build it in 5 minutes (it builds about 5 minutes). But i could understand people who need to learn a lot before doing that. I plan to add a Hudson job for building VMs with NativeBoost. The VM-side changes are so small, that i even tempting to propose adding it to standard VMs.
FFI has a reputation as something that's a bit touchy.
Well, apart from problems with dynamic library search/load, it is quite solid. Of course, new multithreaded stuff, added recently by Eliot, needs to be tested. But for that you need to build different VM :)
It looks a little easier than it is. The prudent choice would be for you to use FFI and curb your ambition away from Alien or NB until later.
There are lots more examples of FFI around than Alien and NB combined. OpenSophie has copious code examples.
I have to stop now. I'm only making it worse for when Igor arrives... must go! :p
Why? The FFI implemented in C are more portable. And it is the only choice for nasty platforms (everyone knows the name ;) where no JIT allowed. (If you don't wanna do a plugin, of coure).
Chris
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
participants (2)
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Chris Cunnington -
Igor Stasenko