[Chicken-hackers] ABI woes

[felix . winkelmann]

>
> > On Jul 10, 2015, at 13:23, address@hidden wrote:
> > ....
> > The problem with other approaches (own implementation of varargs, using
> > assembly for forcing some sort of generic call, etc.) is that they are
> > provisional hacks and take at least as much time to implement as the cleaner
> > and more promising approach.
>
> I'm sorry for not following CHICKEN development deep enough, but curious. Is 
> this meant to replace apply hack and friends?

Yes, that would be obsolete.

>
> > Whatever approach is used, this will be a substantial change, taking a lot 
> > of
> > work: the backend needs to be changed, and all hand-written CPS primitives 
> > need
> > to be adapted, also changing the way rest-args are handled. This needs to be
> > implemented for CHICKEN 4 and later ported to CHICKEN 5, adapting all new 
> > CPS
> > procedures that where introduced with the bignum-related changes. Oh, what
> > fun...
>
> Given the amount of work, why it is needed to duplicate it for CHICKEN 4 and 
> 5? For bootstrapping?

The goals for CHICKEN 5 are a bit too ambitious and it will take very long
until it will be ready, I think. A solution for iOS is needed now,
unfortunately.


felix