[plt-scheme] "define-cunion" prototype for FFI

On Nov 10, Brian Chin wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> Needing a way of representing C unions in the MzScheme FFI, I dug
> into the foreign.ss file and coded up a "define-cunion" form bearing
> many similarities to (and sharing much code with) the existing
> define- cstruct code. The syntax to define a union is identical to
> the struct version (although you are not allowed to use a structure
> supertype), and the created functions have the same interface, with
> the exception of make-TYPE, which instead of taking one argument per
> field (which would make little sense for a union), you pass it the
> symbol of the field you want to fill, and the value you want to fill
> that slot with. I've done some brief testing, and the code seems to
> be complete, except:
> 
> - The functions list->TYPE and it's brethren are still created for  
> unions, even though they have next to no meaning in this framework
> - You can still provide a union as a supertype for a new struct. The  
> behavior in that case is untested, undefined, highly volatile, and  
> confusing.
> 
> I haven't participated in this mailing list enough to know what the
> right procedure for submitting these patches are, so I guess I have
> three questions:
> 
> 1. Is this a useful addition to the FFI library? It preserves the
> semantics of the existing library, and with a little work should
> interact well with the other features.

Yes, not having unions is one of the limitations of libffi.  Another
important one is the lack of vector types.


> 2. If 1, _should_ it be added to MzScheme?

That, however, is questionable.  I'm not dismissing your scheme code
(which I haven't seen) -- but if you started from foreign.ss, then you
might have been working at the wrong level.  To make unions work as
the should, it's important that the resulting type have the right size
and alignment information.  This is required to be able to use unions
in places where any other value goes (eg, a field in a cstruct).


> 3. If 2, how do I go about submitting the appropriate patch?

Well, a `define-cunion' could be packaged up as a library, since it's
just the macro definition.  But perhaps you have more changes that are
required to make it work?  Did you change more than just "foreign.ss"?

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!