Re: Introspection API

[Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>]

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 15:48 +0000, Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> > Should we make the
> >introspection api depend on libffi and offer some form of call-by-name
> >interface + the ability to register type conversion functions ? How
> >would such an api look like ?
> 
>   Better not to create such an API, I think.  It would always be very
> much language specific.  Let each binding do its own thing.
> 
>   Unless, and this is what I thought initially that would be done, we
> have an API to call functions using function name and GValue's.  For
> example.
> 
>  gboolean g_call_function(const char *name, GValueArray *parameters,
> GValue *ret_val); /* returns FALSE if function failed */
> 
>   This would be nice as it would avoid libffi altogether, at least from
> the bindings side.  But the glib introspection code would probably have
> to do GValue conversion itself and use libffi anyway, unless all API
> functions are properly registered like properties and signals are, which
> I do not see as happening any time soon, honestly.
> 

Yes, may be nice to add something like this, even if individual language
bindings choose not to use it to avoid the GValue conversion overhead.

Matthias