[Openmcl-devel] Structure Alignment of Foreign Double Floats

[James Bielman]

Hi,

(I'm using OpenMCL 0.14.3 on OS X 10.4.1)

I'm trying to write a function to determine the alignment of a foreign
type within a structure (for use in a portable FFI library).  I came up
with the following:

(defun foreign-type-alignment (type)
  "Return the alignment in bytes of foreign type TYPE."
  (/ (ccl::foreign-type-alignment
      (ccl::parse-foreign-type type)) 8))

When testing with gcc it seems that doubles are aligned to 4-byte
boundaries in structures, yet OpenMCL returns:

? (foreign-type-alignment 'double)
8

Similar code used in SBCL (both systems are derived from CMUCL?)
agrees with GCC and returns 4.

I created a structure type using the OpenMCL FFI and it seems to align
a double to a 4-byte boundary as expected, apparently ignoring the 8
returned by FOREIGN-TYPE-ALIGNMENT.

So, is what I'm trying to do here completely misguided?  Is there
a better way to get this information?

Thanks!

James