[Xotcl] XOTcl future

[Uwe Zdun]

On Wednesday 26 September 2001 05:19 pm, you wrote:
> A hugely important feature I would like to see in the near future,
> and one I've asked about before, is for a good C&C++ interface. I know
> this is not an easy issue to deal with, but for some things it would
> actually be quite vital. For me, the normal application development model
> would be to built everything in Tcl/XOTcl first, and then to begin
> converting critical parts to C if better performance is required.
>

that's more or less our opinion as well .. a mature (and documented) C API is 
VERY important

> So what I would need is a semi-standard documented mechanism for
> adding procs and instprocs to objects from C (and, possibly later, C++)
> so that the C implementations can rely on the same information about
> object context and next-chaining as the XOTcl code itself. To take this
> even further, I may want to implement complete objects in C.
>

the basic (==OTcl) features are working currently quite well from C, but its 
not documented. You can use XOTclAddIMethod for inst-commands and 
XOTclAddPMethod for obj-commands. Take a look at xotclgdbm or xotclsdbm how 
it can be done.

However, the newer features are still missing (of course, you can use 
Tcl_Eval ... but that's not yielding the desired performance advantages) 

> I've given this some amount of thought, but I don't have any really
> worthwhile suggestions to give as to how best to do this. I just think
> that now, with 1.0 coming out, is a good time to really put some thought
> into this. Another reason is that while the language develops I'm sure it
> will be more and more difficult to specify a complete library for
> this. With a simple core a library can be built and the extended as new
> aspects arise that use the same core.
>

I believe it is actually quite easy to be done, because you just have to add 
extern wrapper functions for existing static functions. Of course, it is hard 
to say what is needed ... but we can add more stuff later on ...  

> Does this make sense at all?
>
 
As Zoran suggested: I would say, yes, Yes, and YES :)

To be serious: we'll roll out what we have done now as 0.9 as soon as 
possible so that you all have a chance to update your applications to the new 
features. We can give the C API a try for 1.0. If you need something 
meanwhile, just put it in yourself, send it to us, and we'll incooperate it 
directly into xotcl.h or xotclInt.h.

Cheers,

Uwe


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-- 
Uwe Zdun
Institute for Computer Science, University of Essen
Phone: +49 201 81 00 332, Fax: +49 201 81 00 398
zdun@{xotcl,computer,acm}.org, uwe.zdun@uni-essen.de