builtin_apply et al

[Stan Shebs]

Nicola Pero wrote:

>>>I can see that the builtin_apply *might* be useful somewhere, but is it
>>>really being used beyond test cases?
>>>
>>>Dare I suggest deprecating this 'feature'? (rather than fixing it)
>>>
>>The consensus among the few who've thought about this is that
>>yes, it should flushed from libobjc and then officially deprecated.
>>
>
>Hmmm. :-)
>
>Yes/maybe ... but what are you suggesting to replace it with ?
>
>Some sort of reliable and portable mechanism must be provided by the
>compiler (or by compiler libraries) to replace it, because the Objective-C
>libraries do need a way to do such stuff.
>
>I've been told in the past it should be replaced with libffi - the main
>problem there is ... how much reliable and portable is libffi ?
>
>
Needed for Java, so gets regular attention for that reason, and has
platform specific code for lots of platforms. Libffi could be thought
of as an implementation of builtin_apply.

>
>ObjC needs a certain amount of visibility into C calling conventions
>to do its thing, but it's tricky to generalize and not many hackers
>work on libobjc (the NeXT/Apple runtime mostly does it with assembly
>code, and is thus not very portable).
>
>
>Not sure what your point is here.
>
>
Just calibrating expectations - it may be a while before builtin_apply
can go away.

Stan