[erlang-questions] idea: Erlang FFI: callbacks and memory management

[Alceste Scalas]

Il giorno mar, 11/12/2007 alle 13.33 +0100, Kenneth Lundin ha scritto:
> Many C-API's have callback functions. It would be nice if that could
> be handled as well but i am not sure if we can find a generic solution
> for that.

If there is some way to call an Erlang fun() from C (i.e. from a BIF),
then the problem should be mostly solved: libffi allows to define
"closures", i.e. to dynamically create a native function that wraps a
callback written in the host language.

I briefly mentioned this possibility some months ago, with examples like
using a C numeric library to integrate a differential equation written
in Erlang.

However, I was not able to find a way to call a fun() from C.  Maybe I
completely missed it: if it's the case, a pointer to the relevant
Erlang/OTP source code would be really helpful...


> I am sure there will be memory allocation issues as well, for example
> cleaning up when an Erlang process dies.

The same problem could arise with linked-in drivers.  Memory allocations
in C, in general, should be handled by library binding developers, that
should ideally provide an Erlang API that makes life easier for final
users.

One possible approach is: provide an API that automatically spawns a
supervisor process that tracks allocations and deallocations, and
eventually performs automatic cleanup when the monitored process(es)
die.

Regards,

alceste
-- 
Alceste Scalas <alceste@REDACTED>
CRS4 - http://www.crs4.it/