Re: Problems when using the 'FOREIGN FUNCTION CALL INTERFACE'

[William.Lott@cs.cmu.edu]

fink@lindau.inf-wiss.ivp.uni-konstanz.de (Josef Fink) writes:
> Project: We are studying 'Information Science' at the 'University of
> Konstanz' and are currently working on our graduate work. In this
> work we aim to integrate a theorem prover written in 'C' in our 'CMU
> Common Lisp-Environment' (-> version 16b on SPARCstation/Sun 4 with
> 16/24 Mb memory) and in this term we intend to make exzessive use of
> the 'FOREIGN FUNCTION CALL INTERFACE' (-> calling external
> 'C'-Functions and accessing the environment of this 'C'-functions
> after they have done their work). At the moment we try to evaluate
> whether this aim of our work is feasable.

Version 16b of CMUCL is a pre-beta release of the new aliens (i.e.
foreign function call) stuff.  Expressions of the form
``def-c-<mumble>'' are for the old foreign function call stuff, and
won't work at all in a 16b core.

Additionally, there are a few bugs in the new aliens stuff.
Specifically, LOAD-FOREIGN doesn't work.  We are currently waiting for
any new bug reports about 16b to trickle in before releasing a 16c,
but this should be in the next week or so.  Due to the nature of the
problem with LOAD-FOREIGN, it's impossible to supply you with a patch.

As the new aliens stuff hasn't really been released, the CMU-CL users
manual hasn't been updated to reflect it's existence.  In the mean
time, you can get the new-aliens specific documentation via FTP.
Connect to either:

	lisp-rt1.slisp.cs.cmu.edu  [128.2.217.9]
	lisp-rt2.slisp.cs.cmu.edu  [128.2.217.10]

log in as anonymous using your email address as for the password, and
get:

	/afs/cs/project/clisp/release/alien.dvi.Z

When a we have a stable version of the new-aliens code, we will be
announcing it on comp.lang.lisp.  If you really want to start using
the new aliens stuff and can't wait, let us know and we'll try to work
something out.

-William Lott
CMU Common Lisp Group