Re: [PATCH] Avoid GOOPS in (system foreign-object)?

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> wrote:

> Just wanted to say that I think that we (or at least I) at some point in
> time had the goal to replace structs with pure GOOPS data structures. In
> the context of FFI, this would allow you to be more flexible than what
> structs allow, ultimately being able to access arbitrary C structs and C++
> structs/classes directly from Scheme.  I find that a proper MOP (which
> maybe still is not fully developed) is a nicer way to handle non-standard
> access than the strange character strings in struct vtables...

The struct layout strings are a bit clunky, indeed.  ;-)  I like the
flexibility that GOOPS provide, especially when it comes to extending
things like ‘equal?’, ‘write’, and so on.

I think it’s better if GOOPS is not a requirement for basic interfaces
like this SMOB replacement, though.  One of the concerns is performance.
For instance, in 2.0, start-up time with GOOPS is on the order of 3
times higher than without it

Right, but it's probably possible to re-organize things such that it's not necessary to load all of GOOPS to use basic interfaces, even if everything is based on a common non-struct data type...  Just meant as input---do what you think is best!