[Lucy] More bindings

[Marvin Humphrey <ma...@rectangular.com>]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 10:17:03PM -0500, Peter Karman wrote:
> I was actually gravitating toward C and PHP myself.

If you're interested in C bindings, I would like to collaborate with you on
that.  (: No more than limited high-level discussions this week, though. :)

A C API is important not just for C users, but for users of dynamic language
hosts who have written rapid prototype extensions that need to be optimized
for high performance.  C host bindings and a C API go hand in hand, though
they aren't exactly the same thing.

To simplify our task, I suggest that we initially target GCC/unixen only for
the C bindings.  It's important that people be able to write cross-platform
extensions that work with the C API, but for the C host binding, I don't want
to deal with cross-platform build headaches right away.

> I was mostly thinking that it might be an interesting exercise to see if SWIG
> could get us partway toward any one (or more) language implementations. Best,
> IME, to truly make idiomatically-sensitive bindings though. It's gotta make new
> users feel more at home when they first take Lucy-in-HostLanguageX for a spin.

Also, a Clownfish binding empowers users to write subclasses entirely in the
host language.  A SWIG binding wouldn't support that.

Marvin Humphrey