FFI (Foreign Function Invocation): Making Cross Engine Extensions
\nby Jeremy Hinegardner<\/p>\n
He Loves Ruby and C. This talk is about Ruby extension development.<\/p>\n
FFI is a way for something in one language to call functions in another
\nlanguage. It’s great because FFI works between JRuby and libsomething.so, or
\nbetween Matz Ruby and libsomething.so, etc. FFI reduces the amount of code you
\nhave to write to bridge between Ruby and C. I wonder how it compares with
\nJava’s Java Native Access. Are they complimentary (for JRuby)?<\/p>\n
There’s an FFI generator that takes C header files and generates FFI code for you.<\/p>\n
FFI saves developer time. It’s not as fast as a traditional C extension. When
\nyou need to support JRuby or Rubiniess, then it saves even more developer
\ntime.<\/p>\n
How many gems are there that use or depend on FFI? Four. ffi-ncurses,
\nffi-swig-generator, tidy_ffi, ffi-zlib. There’s another one for Open GL.<\/p>\n
How many gems are there with extensions? 346<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FFI (Foreign Function Invocation): Making Cross Engine Extensions by Jeremy Hinegardner He Loves Ruby and C. This talk is about Ruby extension development. FFI is a way for something in one language to call functions in another language. It’s great because FFI works between JRuby and libsomething.so, or between Matz Ruby and libsomething.so, etc. FFI … <\/p>\n