Re: Deprecating ffcall

[Fred Kiefer]

David Ayers wrote:
> I agree that if it is really the case that libffi supersedes ffcall on
> all "Supported Platforms" that we should aim to remove it:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2008-12/msg00019.html
> 
> The last stable -base release at the end of last year already defaults
> to libffi.  I'm still uneasy to completely remove ffcall, simply due to
> the lack of testing on various platforms which is why I start writing
> tests like these:
> http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/gnustep/tests/testsuite/trunk/base/NSProxy/test01.m
>  
> yet those do not go far enough as we actually need to test DO in action.
> 
> So.... I agree that we could deprecate ffcall (and build_apply) but I
> think we should also find out which platforms we know we want to support
> and test them with libffi.  [Granted that Linux 2.4 may not be a
> feasible target to keep support for.]

This may sound strange, coming from my side as I already advocated the
use of libffi when it still supported less platforms than ffcall, but I
strongly advocate that we phase out support for ffcall very slowly.

Remember that only two years ago somebody suggested that we should drop
support for libffi :-)

And please remember even asking on the discussion list wont be enough to
find out whether anybody still needs ffcall. People will only start to
complain after its gone.

Cheers
Fred