[Openmcl-devel] Finding the CDB interface files

[Gary Byers]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, David Steuber wrote:

> I keep my openmcl in /Users/david/usr/src/ccl/.  Openmcl has no
> difficulty finding the interface files when started from SLIME or
> running the openmcl script in Terminal.  However, when I save an image
> with save-application and use it in an application bundle, it can't
> find the interface files (I use slime-connect to talk to the running
> application).  What form do I need to have evaluated to fix that issue?

The Darwin interfaces are presumed to be in the directory denoted by
the logical pathname "ccl:darwin-headers;", so the question is sort
of "how do logical pathname translations for the logical host CCL
get set up?", or, if you prefer, "what physical directory does the
CCL logical host use as the base for all relative logical pathnames?"

The function CCL::CCL-DIRECTORY is called each time the lisp starts
up to try to provide an answer to this question.  (There are many
potential answers, and it'd be nice to make this a little more
flexible. perhaps by defining a method on the application class.)
CCL::CCL-DIRECTORY tries to use (in order):

  1) the value of the "CCL_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY" environment variable,
     which is ordinarily set by the "openmcl" shell script;
  2) a Resources/ccl directory, relative to the pathname of the
     executable.  (e.g., if the executable file resides in
     "MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/dppccl", it will look for
     "MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/ccl/", which IIRC can be a
     symbolic link to the "real" CCL directory);
  3) the current directory
>
> A nearly related question:  Building the FFI files does not work for me
> because I do not have GCC 2.95 on my system.  Is there anyway for the
> FFIGEN stuff to work with GCC 3.3?

Helmut Eller got FFIGEN working with GCC 3.x several months ago.  I
haven't had time to make binaries available (or even to help other
people who offered to do so.)

>
> Going even further astray, has anyone got any C header file parsing
> code in Lisp that can generate Lisp code for using the other FFI
> functions like EXTERNAL-CALL?  And can I manually declare foreign types
> that will work with RLET/PREF, etc?

Defining foreign types is, AFAIK, documented.

There should be a documented way of doing what #_ does (without
relying on the interface database.)  IIRC, the undocumented way got
broken quite a while ago.

>
> This is in aid of being able to use agl.h along with AGL.framework
> without killing my fingers typing huge amounts of FFI code.
> QuickTime.framework is in the future as well if I get that far.
>

You really should be able to do this more easily.

As an experiment, I just tried taking 10 minutes away from my other
job on a Sunday afternoon.  There are archives containing AGL and
QT interfaces on the FTP server; so far, the earth hasn't started
spinning off its axis.