[Openmcl-devel] another make-record question

[Dan Knapp]

   Hmm.  What to do about the interface database is an interesting 
problem.
C, of course, doesn't have this problem, because the same information 
is in
the #include files, and it effectively looks up that information at 
compile-time
and builds it into the program.

   If we're resigned to the fact that certain standalone programs may 
need
or want to distribute interface databases, really the clean thing would 
be to
put them in OS X Frameworks.  A Framework is a directory, which can be
placed inside a .app directory, and the user can also install it 
system-wide
simply by moving or copying it out to the appropriate location.

   That way there can be a single, large, "get this if you don't know 
better"
version of an app, and there can also be a slimmer version.  An app 
which
had its own installer could also ask what to do, of course.

   I don't know the technical details of making that happen, but it 
doesn't
look like too large a project.

   As far as what to do with make-record, it would probably be good to
provide both macro and function versions - it's a tiny bit of code, 
after all.
Not sure what names would make their purposes clear, though.

   On an aside, I've rewritten the documentation for make-record to 
mention
that it uses #_malloc and that the user should call #_free.  I've also 
added a
dictionary entry for ccl:terminate-when-unreachable, since it didn't 
have one,
and expanded the ivector tutorial to mention it, based on Gary's post.

-- Dan Knapp