Foreign Function Interface
The term for the means for a language to access code written in other languages (see Combining Languages).Typically, high-level language programmers try to access the wealth of code libraries painfully written in C (and sometimes Assembly) by the lower-level coders. For this, they need some FFI that will allow to specify the way this can be done, hopefully in an automated way. However, the type declarations of low-level languages are often not enough to fully automatically deduce the nicest way (or a correct way, to begin with) to interface with high-level semantics (types, GC, etc.). Hence the need of quite elaborate software packages and FFI databases to deal with the complexity of it all.
- FFIGEN - A Foreign Function Interface generator
- Forklift - A Foreign Function Interface generator: … it reads a set of unannotated C header files and a set of pattern-matching description about them, and outputs stub code and interface files, ready to be called from your favorite HLL
- ILU - An acronym for Inter-Language Unification system, one of the most sophisticated Foreign Function Interface generators
- SWIG - SWIG is a Foreign Function Interface generator
- UFFI - UFFI is a Foreign Function Interface package for Common Lisp
Pages in this topic: FFIGEN Forklift ILU SWIG UFFI
Also linked from: FFI