Finali[zs]ers

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

John

I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I think you are saying that this is a
reason it's important to have Haskell finalizers, but I'm not sure.  How
would you like to write a paragraph or two to explain the issue, and we
can put it in the document?  That way it would say what you mean.  

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: John Meacham [mailto:john at repetae.net]
| Sent: 14 October 2002 22:22
| To: ffi at haskell.org
| Subject: Re: Finali[zs]ers
| 
| I dont have cvs write access but you should mention something about
| expressing gc dependencies between ForeignPtr's. the only two ways to
do
| this in the current haskell systems are
| * weak pointers
| * touchForeignPtr from the finalizer of another ForeignPtr
| 
| if the second one is not allowed by restricting us to C only
finalizers,
| then the first needs to be added into the FFI, (or some other
mechanism
| invented). I consider this functionality vital for any non-trivial use
| of ForeignPtr, and it becomes more important as we move more stuff to
C
| land, as C structures become more common.
| 
| for more info on the use of this, see the FFI touchForeignPtr
| documentation and the paper describing Weak pointers in ghc. the fact
| that multiple people saw the need for this and came up with solutions
| probably says something about its usefulness.
| 	John
| 
| On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 06:16:05PM +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
| > > Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion so
| > > far.  Since
| > > there are a lot of subtle points to be considered at once, I
| > > thought I'd
| > > try to write a summary of the issues raised so far.
| > >
| > > I'll put something in the repository so we can all hack on it.
| > > Hopefully I'll have something ready later today.
| >
| > oops, I should have mentioned that if you just want to read the
| > document, it will be available here:
| >
| >
| >
http://cvs.haskell.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/haskell-report/ffi/finalizers.
| > txt
| >
| > just as soon as the CVS web server updates its repository.
| >
| > Cheers,
| > 	Simon
| >
| > _______________________________________________
| > FFI mailing list
| > FFI at haskell.org
| > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ffi
| 
| --
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
| John Meacham - California Institute of Technology, Alum. -
john at foo.net
|
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