[Help-smalltalk] [PATCH] revamp CTypes, part 1, and some questions

[Paolo Bonzini]

This is a refactoring that came out while looking at GDBM conversion. 
The root problem is that there are forward references to a class in a 
<cCall: ...> pragma.  In the conversion of GDBM, we get

Object subclass: GDBM [

    ... [
        <cCall: ... returning: DatumStruct type>
]

CStruct subclass: DatumStruct [
]

Pragma arguments are evaluated at compile-time, which breaks horribly 
because DatumStruct is still undefined (and hence nil).

Now I'm tempted to break source-code compatibility.  How?

1) Requiring DatumStruct to come first is not possible, because of 
possible circular references.  (It would work in this case though).

2) Changing "DatumStruct type" to "#{DatumStruct}" seems like a good 
idea anyway.  It would match the way types are referenced in CStructs, 
and likewise, we could allow #(#ptr #{DatumStruct}) etc.  Do you people 
agree?

It would also be possible to add a hack into scripts/Convert.st in some 
way to rewrite "DatumStruct type" into "#{DatumStruct}".


If anybody has an idea how to avoid this, please shoot.

Paolo

* looking for address@hidden/smalltalk--devo--2.2--patch-512 to compare with
* auto-adding address@hidden/smalltalk--devo--2.2--patch-512 to greedy revision 
library /Users/bonzinip/Archives/revlib
* found immediate ancestor revision in library 
(address@hidden/smalltalk--devo--2.2--patch-511)
* patching for this revision (address@hidden/smalltalk--devo--2.2--patch-512)
* comparing to address@hidden/smalltalk--devo--2.2--patch-512