builtin_apply et al

[Stelios Xanthakis]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Stan Shebs wrote:

> >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.

Why not make builtin_apply a wrapper of libffi then?

builtin_apply *can be* useful for code generators and the
good thing about it is that we don't have to include headers
and link to libraries. It's all in the compiler.

On the other hand, the builtin_apply interface is kinda broken.
I still haven't figured out how to compute size.