��In addition to my mail from yesterday to vm-dev I want to share the following example to illustrate the problem.�� I have taken StructA and StructNested from the FFIExternalStructureReferenceHandle class comment and put it into Unclassified.st that is attached to this mail. I am also making a call to LibC's getpid and try to push StructNested to the stack. The ffiCall is failing before getpid is called (Bad argument to external function).
The reproducer is:
�� �� �� �� StructA new theNest anyCall.
This is not answering the question I need answering :-).�� Can you answer the Qs I asked on vm-dev yesterday about the signature of the callback etc?�� Can you reply there?�� AdvThnaksance
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StructA has a ByteArray handle of the full struct. theNest returns an instance of StructNested with a FFIExternalStructureReferenceHandle. This makes sense as well. It can't be a copy of the ByteArray (or else updates would be invisible to the outer struct) and it can't be an ExternalAddress as StructA's handle might move in the Smalltalk heap.
I am not entirely sure how this is should work but what do you think of:
1st) Extending ExternalStructure class comment to list FFIExternalStructureReferenceHandle as possible handle type? I think we would only describe the reality.
2nd) ThreadedFFIPlugin>>#ffiPushStructureContentsOf: should be aware of FFIExternalStructureReferenceHandle and know how to reach the handle. Or should there be something in the image converting this to a ByteArray when being pushed as value in a ffiCall?
comments/ideas?