libffi/README

   1 Status
   2 ======
   3
   4 libffi-4?? was released on TBD.  Check the libffi web
   5 page for updates: <URL:http://sourceware.org/libffi/>.
   6
   7
   8 What is libffi?
   9 ===============
  10
  11 Compilers for high level languages generate code that follow certain
  12 conventions. These conventions are necessary, in part, for separate
  13 compilation to work. One such convention is the "calling
  14 convention". The "calling convention" is essentially a set of
  15 assumptions made by the compiler about where function arguments will
  16 be found on entry to a function. A "calling convention" also specifies
  17 where the return value for a function is found.
  18
  19 Some programs may not know at the time of compilation what arguments
  20 are to be passed to a function. For instance, an interpreter may be
  21 told at run-time about the number and types of arguments used to call
  22 a given function. Libffi can be used in such programs to provide a
  23 bridge from the interpreter program to compiled code.
  24
  25 The libffi library provides a portable, high level programming
  26 interface to various calling conventions. This allows a programmer to
  27 call any function specified by a call interface description at run
  28 time.
  29
  30 FFI stands for Foreign Function Interface.  A foreign function
  31 interface is the popular name for the interface that allows code
  32 written in one language to call code written in another language. The
  33 libffi library really only provides the lowest, machine dependent
  34 layer of a fully featured foreign function interface. A layer must
  35 exist above libffi that handles type conversions for values passed
  36 between the two languages.
  37
  38
  39 Supported Platforms
  40 ===================
  41
  42 Libffi has been ported to many different platforms.
  43 For specific configuration details and testing status, please
  44 refer to the wiki page here:
  45
  46  http://www.moxielogic.org/wiki/index.php?title=Libffi_3.2
  47
  48 At the time of release, the following basic configurations have been
  49 tested:
  50
  51 |-----------------+------------------+-------------------------|
  52 | Architecture    | Operating System | Compiler                |
  53 |-----------------+------------------+-------------------------|
  54 | AArch64 (ARM64) | iOS              | Clang                   |
  55 | AArch64         | Linux            | GCC                     |
  56 | Alpha           | Linux            | GCC                     |
  57 | Alpha           | Tru64            | GCC                     |
  58 | ARC             | Linux            | GCC                     |
  59 | ARM             | Linux            | GCC                     |
  60 | ARM             | iOS              | GCC                     |
  61 | AVR32           | Linux            | GCC                     |
  62 | Blackfin        | uClinux          | GCC                     |
  63 | HPPA            | HPUX             | GCC                     |
  64 | IA-64           | Linux            | GCC                     |
  65 | M68K            | FreeMiNT         | GCC                     |
  66 | M68K            | Linux            | GCC                     |
  67 | M68K            | RTEMS            | GCC                     |
  68 | M88K            | OpenBSD/mvme88k  | GCC                     |
  69 | Meta            | Linux            | GCC                     |
  70 | MicroBlaze      | Linux            | GCC                     |
  71 | MIPS            | IRIX             | GCC                     |
  72 | MIPS            | Linux            | GCC                     |
  73 | MIPS            | RTEMS            | GCC                     |
  74 | MIPS64          | Linux            | GCC                     |
  75 | Moxie           | Bare metal       | GCC                     |
  76 | Nios II         | Linux            | GCC                     |
  77 | OpenRISC        | Linux            | GCC                     |
  78 | PowerPC 32-bit  | AIX              | IBM XL C                |
  79 | PowerPC 64-bit  | AIX              | IBM XL C                |
  80 | PowerPC         | AMIGA            | GCC                     |
  81 | PowerPC         | Linux            | GCC                     |
  82 | PowerPC         | Mac OSX          | GCC                     |
  83 | PowerPC         | FreeBSD          | GCC                     |
  84 | PowerPC 64-bit  | FreeBSD          | GCC                     |
  85 | PowerPC 64-bit  | Linux ELFv1      | GCC                     |
  86 | PowerPC 64-bit  | Linux ELFv2      | GCC                     |
  87 | S390            | Linux            | GCC                     |
  88 | S390X           | Linux            | GCC                     |
  89 | SPARC           | Linux            | GCC                     |
  90 | SPARC           | Solaris          | GCC                     |
  91 | SPARC           | Solaris          | Oracle Solaris Studio C |
  92 | SPARC64         | Linux            | GCC                     |
  93 | SPARC64         | FreeBSD          | GCC                     |
  94 | SPARC64         | Solaris          | Oracle Solaris Studio C |
  95 | TILE-Gx/TILEPro | Linux            | GCC                     |
  96 | VAX             | OpenBSD/vax      | GCC                     |
  97 | X86             | FreeBSD          | GCC                     |
  98 | X86             | GNU HURD         | GCC                     |
  99 | X86             | Interix          | GCC                     |
 100 | X86             | kFreeBSD         | GCC                     |
 101 | X86             | Linux            | GCC                     |
 102 | X86             | Mac OSX          | GCC                     |
 103 | X86             | OpenBSD          | GCC                     |
 104 | X86             | OS/2             | GCC                     |
 105 | X86             | Solaris          | GCC                     |
 106 | X86             | Solaris          | Oracle Solaris Studio C |
 107 | X86             | Windows/Cygwin   | GCC                     |
 108 | X86             | Windows/MingW    | GCC                     |
 109 | X86-64          | FreeBSD          | GCC                     |
 110 | X86-64          | Linux            | GCC                     |
 111 | X86-64          | Linux/x32        | GCC                     |
 112 | X86-64          | OpenBSD          | GCC                     |
 113 | X86-64          | Solaris          | Oracle Solaris Studio C |
 114 | X86-64          | Windows/Cygwin   | GCC                     |
 115 | X86-64          | Windows/MingW    | GCC                     |
 116 | Xtensa          | Linux            | GCC                     |
 117 |-----------------+------------------+-------------------------|
 118
 119 Please send additional platform test results to
 120 libffi-discuss@sourceware.org and feel free to update the wiki page
 121 above.
 122
 123 Installing libffi
 124 =================
 125
 126 First you must configure the distribution for your particular
 127 system. Go to the directory you wish to build libffi in and run the
 128 "configure" program found in the root directory of the libffi source
 129 distribution.
 130
 131 If you're building libffi directly from version control, configure won't
 132 exist yet; run ./autogen.sh first.
 133
 134 You may want to tell configure where to install the libffi library and
 135 header files. To do that, use the --prefix configure switch.  Libffi
 136 will install under /usr/local by default.
 137
 138 If you want to enable extra run-time debugging checks use the the
 139 --enable-debug configure switch. This is useful when your program dies
 140 mysteriously while using libffi.
 141
 142 Another useful configure switch is --enable-purify-safety. Using this
 143 will add some extra code which will suppress certain warnings when you
 144 are using Purify with libffi. Only use this switch when using
 145 Purify, as it will slow down the library.
 146
 147 It's also possible to build libffi on Windows platforms with
 148 Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler.  In this case, use the msvcc.sh
 149 wrapper script during configuration like so:
 150
 151 path/to/configure CC=path/to/msvcc.sh CXX=path/to/msvcc.sh LD=link CPP="cl -nologo -EP"
 152
 153 For 64-bit Windows builds, use CC="path/to/msvcc.sh -m64" and
 154 CXX="path/to/msvcc.sh -m64".  You may also need to specify --build
 155 appropriately.
 156
 157 It is also possible to build libffi on Windows platforms with the LLVM
 158 project's clang-cl compiler, like below:
 159
 160 path/to/configure CC="path/to/msvcc.sh -clang-cl" CXX="path/to/msvcc.sh -clang-cl" LD=link CPP="clang-cl -EP"
 161
 162 When building with MSVC under a MingW environment, you may need to
 163 remove the line in configure that sets 'fix_srcfile_path' to a 'cygpath'
 164 command.  ('cygpath' is not present in MingW, and is not required when
 165 using MingW-style paths.)
 166
 167 For iOS builds, the 'libffi.xcodeproj' Xcode project is available.
 168
 169 Configure has many other options. Use "configure --help" to see them all.
 170
 171 Once configure has finished, type "make". Note that you must be using
 172 GNU make.  You can ftp GNU make from ftp.gnu.org:/pub/gnu/make .
 173
 174 To ensure that libffi is working as advertised, type "make check".
 175 This will require that you have DejaGNU installed.
 176
 177 To install the library and header files, type "make install".
 178
 179
 180 History
 181 =======
 182
 183 See the git log for details at http://github.com/atgreen/libffi.
 184
 185 4.0 TBD
 186         New API in support of GO closures.
 187
 188 3.2.1 Nov-12-14
 189         Build fix for non-iOS AArch64 targets.
 190
 191 3.2 Nov-11-14
 192         Add C99 Complex Type support (currently only supported on
 193           s390).
 194         Add support for PASCAL and REGISTER calling conventions on x86
 195           Windows/Linux.
 196         Add OpenRISC and Cygwin-64 support.
 197         Bug fixes.
 198
 199 3.1 May-19-14
 200         Add AArch64 (ARM64) iOS support.
 201         Add Nios II support.
 202         Add m88k and DEC VAX support.
 203         Add support for stdcall, thiscall, and fastcall on non-Windows
 204           32-bit x86 targets such as Linux.
 205         Various Android, MIPS N32, x86, FreeBSD and UltraSPARC IIi
 206           fixes.
 207         Make the testsuite more robust: eliminate several spurious
 208           failures, and respect the $CC and $CXX environment variables.
 209         Archive off the manually maintained ChangeLog in favor of git
 210           log.
 211
 212 3.0.13 Mar-17-13
 213         Add Meta support.
 214         Add missing Moxie bits.
 215         Fix stack alignment bug on 32-bit x86.
 216         Build fix for m68000 targets.
 217         Build fix for soft-float Power targets.
 218         Fix the install dir location for some platforms when building
 219           with GCC (OS X, Solaris).
 220         Fix Cygwin regression.
 221
 222 3.0.12 Feb-11-13
 223         Add Moxie support.
 224         Add AArch64 support.
 225         Add Blackfin support.
 226         Add TILE-Gx/TILEPro support.
 227         Add MicroBlaze support.
 228         Add Xtensa support.
 229         Add support for PaX enabled kernels with MPROTECT.
 230         Add support for native vendor compilers on
 231           Solaris and AIX.
 232         Work around LLVM/GCC interoperability issue on x86_64.
 233
 234 3.0.11 Apr-11-12
 235         Lots of build fixes.
 236         Add support for variadic functions (ffi_prep_cif_var).
 237         Add Linux/x32 support.
 238         Add thiscall, fastcall and MSVC cdecl support on Windows.
 239         Add Amiga and newer MacOS support.
 240         Add m68k FreeMiNT support.
 241         Integration with iOS' xcode build tools.
 242         Fix Octeon and MC68881 support.
 243         Fix code pessimizations.
 244
 245 3.0.10 Aug-23-11
 246         Add support for Apple's iOS.
 247         Add support for ARM VFP ABI.
 248         Add RTEMS support for MIPS and M68K.
 249         Fix instruction cache clearing problems on
 250           ARM and SPARC.
 251         Fix the N64 build on mips-sgi-irix6.5.
 252         Enable builds with Microsoft's compiler.
 253         Enable x86 builds with Oracle's Solaris compiler.
 254         Fix support for calling code compiled with Oracle's Sparc
 255           Solaris compiler.
 256         Testsuite fixes for Tru64 Unix.
 257         Additional platform support.
 258
 259 3.0.9 Dec-31-09
 260         Add AVR32 and win64 ports.  Add ARM softfp support.
 261         Many fixes for AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, *BSD.
 262         Several PowerPC and x86-64 bug fixes.
 263         Build DLL for windows.
 264
 265 3.0.8 Dec-19-08
 266         Add *BSD, BeOS, and PA-Linux support.
 267
 268 3.0.7 Nov-11-08
 269         Fix for ppc FreeBSD.
 270         (thanks to Andreas Tobler)
 271
 272 3.0.6 Jul-17-08
 273         Fix for closures on sh.
 274         Mark the sh/sh64 stack as non-executable.
 275         (both thanks to Kaz Kojima)
 276
 277 3.0.5 Apr-3-08
 278         Fix libffi.pc file.
 279         Fix #define ARM for IcedTea users.
 280         Fix x86 closure bug.
 281
 282 3.0.4 Feb-24-08
 283         Fix x86 OpenBSD configury.
 284
 285 3.0.3 Feb-22-08
 286         Enable x86 OpenBSD thanks to Thomas Heller, and
 287         x86-64 FreeBSD thanks to Björn König and Andreas Tobler.
 288         Clean up test instruction in README.
 289
 290 3.0.2 Feb-21-08
 291         Improved x86 FreeBSD support.
 292         Thanks to Björn König.
 293
 294 3.0.1 Feb-15-08
 295         Fix instruction cache flushing bug on MIPS.
 296         Thanks to David Daney.
 297
 298 3.0.0 Feb-15-08
 299         Many changes, mostly thanks to the GCC project.
 300         Cygnus Solutions is now Red Hat.
 301
 302   [10 years go by...]
 303
 304 1.20 Oct-5-98
 305         Raffaele Sena produces ARM port.
 306
 307 1.19 Oct-5-98
 308         Fixed x86 long double and long long return support.
 309         m68k bug fixes from Andreas Schwab.
 310         Patch for DU assembler compatibility for the Alpha from Richard
 311         Henderson.
 312
 313 1.18 Apr-17-98
 314         Bug fixes and MIPS configuration changes.
 315
 316 1.17 Feb-24-98
 317         Bug fixes and m68k port from Andreas Schwab. PowerPC port from
 318         Geoffrey Keating. Various bug x86, Sparc and MIPS bug fixes.
 319
 320 1.16 Feb-11-98
 321         Richard Henderson produces Alpha port.
 322
 323 1.15 Dec-4-97
 324         Fixed an n32 ABI bug. New libtool, auto* support.
 325
 326 1.14 May-13-97
 327         libtool is now used to generate shared and static libraries.
 328         Fixed a minor portability problem reported by Russ McManus
 329         <mcmanr@eq.gs.com>.
 330
 331 1.13 Dec-2-96
 332         Added --enable-purify-safety to keep Purify from complaining
 333         about certain low level code.
 334         Sparc fix for calling functions with < 6 args.
 335         Linux x86 a.out fix.
 336
 337 1.12 Nov-22-96
 338         Added missing ffi_type_void, needed for supporting void return
 339         types. Fixed test case for non MIPS machines. Cygnus Support
 340         is now Cygnus Solutions.
 341
 342 1.11 Oct-30-96
 343         Added notes about GNU make.
 344
 345 1.10 Oct-29-96
 346         Added configuration fix for non GNU compilers.
 347
 348 1.09 Oct-29-96
 349         Added --enable-debug configure switch. Clean-ups based on LCLint
 350         feedback. ffi_mips.h is always installed. Many configuration
 351         fixes. Fixed ffitest.c for sparc builds.
 352
 353 1.08 Oct-15-96
 354         Fixed n32 problem. Many clean-ups.
 355
 356 1.07 Oct-14-96
 357         Gordon Irlam rewrites v8.S again. Bug fixes.
 358
 359 1.06 Oct-14-96
 360         Gordon Irlam improved the sparc port.
 361
 362 1.05 Oct-14-96
 363         Interface changes based on feedback.
 364
 365 1.04 Oct-11-96
 366         Sparc port complete (modulo struct passing bug).
 367
 368 1.03 Oct-10-96
 369         Passing struct args, and returning struct values works for
 370         all architectures/calling conventions. Expanded tests.
 371
 372 1.02 Oct-9-96
 373         Added SGI n32 support. Fixed bugs in both o32 and Linux support.
 374         Added "make test".
 375
 376 1.01 Oct-8-96
 377         Fixed float passing bug in mips version. Restructured some
 378         of the code. Builds cleanly with SGI tools.
 379
 380 1.00 Oct-7-96
 381         First release. No public announcement.
 382
 383
 384 Authors & Credits
 385 =================
 386
 387 libffi was originally written by Anthony Green <green@moxielogic.com>.
 388
 389 The developers of the GNU Compiler Collection project have made
 390 innumerable valuable contributions.  See the ChangeLog file for
 391 details.
 392
 393 Some of the ideas behind libffi were inspired by Gianni Mariani's free
 394 gencall library for Silicon Graphics machines.
 395
 396 The closure mechanism was designed and implemented by Kresten Krab
 397 Thorup.
 398
 399 Major processor architecture ports were contributed by the following
 400 developers:
 401
 402 aarch64         Marcus Shawcroft, James Greenhalgh
 403 alpha           Richard Henderson
 404 arm             Raffaele Sena
 405 blackfin        Alexandre Keunecke I. de Mendonca
 406 cris            Simon Posnjak, Hans-Peter Nilsson
 407 frv             Anthony Green
 408 ia64            Hans Boehm
 409 m32r            Kazuhiro Inaoka
 410 m68k            Andreas Schwab
 411 m88k            Miod Vallat
 412 microblaze      Nathan Rossi
 413 mips            Anthony Green, Casey Marshall
 414 mips64          David Daney
 415 moxie           Anthony Green
 416 nios ii         Sandra Loosemore
 417 openrisc        Sebastian Macke
 418 pa              Randolph Chung, Dave Anglin, Andreas Tobler
 419 powerpc         Geoffrey Keating, Andreas Tobler,
 420                          David Edelsohn, John Hornkvist
 421 powerpc64       Jakub Jelinek
 422 s390            Gerhard Tonn, Ulrich Weigand
 423 sh              Kaz Kojima
 424 sh64            Kaz Kojima
 425 sparc           Anthony Green, Gordon Irlam
 426 tile-gx/tilepro Walter Lee
 427 vax             Miod Vallat
 428 x86             Anthony Green, Jon Beniston
 429 x86-64          Bo Thorsen
 430 xtensa          Chris Zankel
 431
 432 Jesper Skov and Andrew Haley both did more than their fair share of
 433 stepping through the code and tracking down bugs.
 434
 435 Thanks also to Tom Tromey for bug fixes, documentation and
 436 configuration help.
 437
 438 Thanks to Jim Blandy, who provided some useful feedback on the libffi
 439 interface.
 440
 441 Andreas Tobler has done a tremendous amount of work on the testsuite.
 442
 443 Alex Oliva solved the executable page problem for SElinux.
 444
 445 The list above is almost certainly incomplete and inaccurate.  I'm
 446 happy to make corrections or additions upon request.
 447
 448 If you have a problem, or have found a bug, please send a note to the
 449 author at green@moxielogic.com, or the project mailing list at
 450 libffi-discuss@sourceware.org.