calling C code // drivers

[Håkan Stenholm]

On söndag, sep 21, 2003, at 15:19 Europe/Stockholm, Vlad Dumitrescu 
wrote:

> From: "Håkan Stenholm"
>> Hipe only works on certain OS/CPU combinations (Linux/Intel and
>> Solaris/Sparc) so a number of currently supported platforms
>> (Windows/Intel, MacOSX/PPC, Linux/PPC, ...) couldn't handle 
>> interfacing
>> to C this way.
>
> Yes, this is true - for the time being. I don't think there is a 
> fundamental
> problem that restricts the number of usable platforms, so it's just a 
> matter
> of resources and interest.
>
Your quite right that there are probably no real fundamental reasons 
why this wouldn't work. Erik mentioned a number of more fundamental 
safety reasons why this might be a bad idea.

I mainly wanted to point out that this solution, isn't currently 
practical as a driver replacement for all platforms, and considering 
the time currently needed to implement HIPE for a CPU architecture, 
will most likely mean that there will always be some platforms that 
aren't supported - so it may be hard to get rid of the current driver 
implementation.

This would also make Erlang less portable, as things like user defined 
BIFs would only work on some platforms (the ones that support HIPE).


> /Vlad
>