Re: [freeelks-devel] external C

[Helmut B. <hel...@gm...>]

Colin LeMahieu wrote:
> I don't see why you couldn't re implement these classes to fit your 
> compiler.  At some point the abstract Eiffel code needs to be 
> translated to a machine specific implementation.  Right now the target 
> machine implementation for FreeELKS is a C library.
>
> Base C implementations have similar issues, when porting to a new 
> platform you need to reimplement libc; I cannot copy the libc from a 
> Windows machine and use it on a new Motorola chip.  Your 
> reimplementation should export the same interface; using subclassing 
> in eiffel can help you with this as can the project-level class 
> renaming when you have a reimplemented version complete.
>
Clearly I can patch (or reimplement -- put the wording as you like) the 
features of FreeELKS in a way that they fit into my compiler without 
changing the external interface. No problem with that. But I had the 
impression that FreeELKS had a different purpose.

May be I am wrong, but the basic idea behind FreeELKS is to be a 
reference implementation that can be run on any compiler. I would 
support that idea, because it gives the users some confidence that if 
they build their application of FreeELKS, they are portable across 
compilers.

There are different ways to reach portablity. Having a reference 
implementation is one way. I thought that FreeELKS had chosen to go that 
way.

But tell me, if I am wrong!

Regards
Helmut
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/tecomp
http://tecomp.sourceforge.net