Maybe you talk about TalkFFI which aumatically wrapped C libraries for Pharo and i think Squeak as well but used Nativeboos, i think
http://forum.world.st/TalkFFI-automatic-FFI-generation-for-Pharo-td4662239.html On the subject of Fortran yes you can use UFFI if Fortran code is compiled as a DLL (or equivelant non Windoom OSes) https://software.intel.com/en-us/node/535305 Dynamic Library format are not exclusive to C for generation , many languages can generate them so even though UFFI is used predominatly for C any language that can generate a DLL without any name mangling should be accessible via UFFI. if DLL generation is not possible, then you can drop down to my solution of Shared Memory Mapped Files. Which means you make an executable in Frotran (or any other language) that contains the code you want to access and creates a shared memory region and you can access that region from Pharo via UFFI. This is how I built my CPPBridge project. Which one can use as a template for generating similar bridge for Fortran or any other language where the generation of DLLs is not practical or possible. The shared memory region can be used also as a means of communication additional to sharing live state, memory mapped files automatically save the live state so next time you open the file it behaves as you would expect a Pharo image to behave by restoring the live state. A means to extend Pharo image to include memory not managed by the VM. Because memory mapped files is mechanism of the OS Kernel and is also the mechanism used for the loading of dynamic libraries like DLLs there is also no loss of performance and is the fastest way of communication between languages, libraries and applications. So yes using Fortran code is possible via UFFI in more than one way. But in the end it should be noted here that because IPC mechanisms (common way of using libraries from other languages) are based on core OS functionality like , memory managment, sockets , pipes, etc its not hard to use libraries from any language from inside any language. So Pharo can use Fortran libraries and Fortran can use Pharo libraries, its also possible to retain live coding even when executing code written in another language through various means. Recently I was succesful in making Python into a basic live coding enviroment , meaning code that when changed in the source file it updates also existing live intances as you expect in Pharo. Python also supports memory mapped files so its possible to create a joined live coding enviroment and live image that containes both Pharo and Python bytecode. Of course without touching VM source code. Even though live state is not tricky to retain for compiled languages, live code can be a bit trickier to do but still not impossible or that hard as most would assume. Sky is the limit. Bottom line is that if you have a favorite library in any language you can use it from inside Pharo with at worst a few hundrend lines of setup code you can create as a library and of coure reuse next time you want to use again a library from another language without having to write a line of additional code. The technology is available is just a matter of learning how to use it. Especially if its a very large libraries it will be thousands times easier than trying to replicate the functionality in Pharo. On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 6:26 PM Sean P. DeNigris <s...@clipperadams.com> wrote: > Ben Coman wrote > > it seems to hint how to do it from Pharo UFFI. > > Slightly OT: I remember years ago, someone (Dave Mason?) demoed a library > which automatically created FFI wrappers for C libs. I never heard anything > about it after that, which is sad, because I was amazed and wanted to use > it! > > > > ----- > Cheers, > Sean > -- > Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html > >
