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Re: libffi package


>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Heller <theller@python.net> writes:

Thomas> Jeff Sturm <jsturm@one-point.com> writes:
>> I didn't see an answer to this question, so I'll give it a shot.  Though I
>> don't speak for libffi maintainers:

Thomas> Thanks anyway.  Is there a magic spell I need to get a comment from the
Thomas> maintainers ;-)?

I was hoping that Anthony would reply.  (Hint, hint.)

>> I don't know.  The upstream package might, but as this libffi is part of
>> GCC there is little reason it seems to support other compilers.

Thomas> What do you mean by 'upstream package'?  My english (or jargon, maybe)
Thomas> isn't able to understand this...

Back in the day, libffi was separately maintained and, in theory,
occasionally copied into the gcc tree.  In practice this didn't really
happen.  AFAIK there is no upstream package any more.

Thomas> Ok, I understand that the GCC maintainers are not too
Thomas> interested in adding support for other compilers or platforms,
Thomas> OTOH it seems there are still 'standalone' distributions of
Thomas> libffi (or libffi2), for debian for example.  What's the
Thomas> difference between libffi and libffi2?

I suppose libffi must be libffi 1.x and libffi2 is libffi 2.x.  1.x is
the old, dead "upstream" version.

My opinion is that we would accept patches for non-gcc compilers
provided someone were willing to maintain such changes.  I.e., someone
would have to make sure they don't break.  This wouldn't happen
"naturally" since libffi is built as a target library in the gcc tree,
i.e., it is only ever built with gcc during the course of ordinary gcc
development.

Likewise, if someone wanted to do a real libffi release out of the gcc
tree, I'd accept that.  We'd probably need to talk a bit about library
versioning and package version numbers, nothing major though.

I have no clue how the other gcc hackers feel about this.
Perhaps this is an SC issue.  I don't know that either.

Thomas> Have done this already and didn't get an answer.  Well, that was half a
Thomas> year ago or so, is he more active now?  The idea was to reach the
Thomas> current developers/maintainers on this list.

Anthony is still around but not very active.  As Jeff said, he's been
working on getting the copyrights assigned to the FSF.  I don't know
the status of that.  There are some major-ish patches pending the
completion of this though -- at least some things from Andreas and
also I've heard rumor of an hppa port.

Tom


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