TODO

-*- Text -*-

This is a collection of TODO items and ideas in no particular order.

### Testing

-> Test uffi-compat with more UFFI libraries.
-> Write more FOREIGN-GLOBALS.SET.* tests.
-> Finish tests/random-tester.lisp
-> Write benchmarks comparing CFFI vs. native FFIs and also demonstrating
   performance of each platform.
-> Write more STRUCT.ALIGNMENT.* tests (namely involving the :LONG-LONG
   and :UNSIGNED-LONG-LONG types) and test them in more ABIs.
-> Run tests with the different kinds of shared libraries available on
   MacOS X.

### Ports

-> Finish GCL port, port to MCL.
-> Update Corman port. [2007-02-22 LO]

### Features

-> Implement a declarative interface for FOREIGN-FUNCALL-PTR, similar to
   DEFCUN/FOREIGN-FUNCALL.
-> Implement the proposed interfaces (see doc/).
-> Extend FOREIGN-SLOT-VALUE and make it accept multiple "indices" for
   directly accessing structs inside structs, arrays inside structs, etc...
-> Implement EXPLAIN-FOREIGN-SLOT-VALUE.
-> Implement :in/:out/:in-out for DEFCFUN (and FOREIGN-FUNCALL?).
-> Add support for multiple memory allocation schemes (like CLISP), namely
   support for allocating with malloc() (so that it can be freed on the C
   side)>
-> Extend DEFCVAR's symbol macro in order to handle memory (de)allocation
   automatically (see CLISP).
-> Implement byte swapping routines (see /usr/include/linux/byteorder)
-> Warn about :void in places where it doesn't make sense.

### Underspecified Semantics

-> (setf (mem-ref ptr <aggregate-type> offset) <value>)
-> Review the interface for coherence across Lisps with regard to
   behaviour in "exceptional" situations. Eg: threads, dumping cores,
   accessing foreign symbols that don't exist, etc...
-> On Lispworks a Lisp float is a double and therefore won't necessarily
   fit in a C float. Figure out a way to handle this.
-> Allegro: callbacks' return values.
-> Lack of uniformity with regard to pointers. Allegro: 0 -> NULL.
   CLISP/Lispworks: NIL -> NULL.
-> Some lisps will accept a lisp float being passed to :double
   and a lisp double to :float. We should either coerce on lisps that
   don't accept this or check-type on lisps that do. Probably the former
   is better since on lispworks/x86 double == float.

### Possible Optimizations

-> More compiler macros on some of the CFFI-SYS implementations.
-> Optimize UFFI-COMPAT when the vector stuff is implemented.
-> Being able to declare that some C int will always fit in a Lisp
   fixnum. Allegro has a :fixnum ftype and CMUCL/SBCL can use
   (unsigned-byte 29) others could perhaps behave like :int?
-> An option for defcfun to expand into a compiler macro which would
   allow the macroexpansion-time translators to look at the forms
   passed to the functions.

### Known Issues

-> CLISP FASL portability is broken. Fix this by placing LOAD-TIME-VALUE
   forms in the right places and moving other calculations to load-time.
   (eg: calculating struct size/alignment.) Ideally we'd only move them
   to load-time when we actually care about fasl portability.
     (defmacro maybe-load-time-value (form)
       (if <we care about fasl portability>
           `(load-time-value ,form)
           form))
-> cffi-tests.asd's :c-test-lib component is causing the whole testsuite
   to be recompiled everytime. Figure that out.
-> The (if (constantp foo) (do-something-with (eval foo)) ...) pattern
   used in many places throughout the code is apparently not 100% safe.
-> On ECL platforms without DFFI we need to build a non-linked version
   of libtest.
-> foreign-enum-keyword/value should have their own error condition?
   <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.cffi.devel/975> [2007-02-22 LO]

### Documentation

-> Fill the missing sections in the CFFI User Manual.
-> Update the CFFI-SYS Specification.
-> have two versions of the manual on the website

### CFFI-Grovel

-> Look into making the C output more concise.

### CFFI-Toolchain

-> Port the toolchain parameter detection to more implementations
-> Port the static linking support to more implementations
-> Add a mechanism to configure and/or detect dynamic libraries against
   which to link for instance.
   It could be a variable in which flags are accumulated,
   or an autodetection after loading everything, see
    https://github.com/borodust/cl-bodge/blob/0.3.0/distribution/build.lisp#L79

### CFFI/C2FFI

-> Generate wrappers for C inline function definitions (and maybe for some
   #define's?)
-> It would be nice if c2ffi emitted its output in a stable order
   for details see https://github.com/rpav/c2ffi/issues/28
-> Handle va_list. For now it's treated as any other argument.

### Other

-> Type-checking pointer interface.