Nice-FFI

Version

0.4

Date

2010-03-31

Homepage

github.com/jacius/nice-ffi/

Author

John Croisant <[email protected]>

Copyright

2009-2010 John Croisant

Description

Nice-FFI is a layer on top of Ruby-FFI [1] (and compatible FFI systems) with features to ease development of FFI-based libraries.

Nice-FFI currently features:

  • NiceFFI::Library: a stand-in for FFI::Library that provides methods for easily finding and loading libraries on any platform, plus automatic wrapping of functions that return struct pointers.

  • NiceFFI::PathSet: a class with customizable rules for finding library files on multiple operating system. PathSet is used by NiceFFI::Library.load_library.

  • NiceFFI::Struct: a stand-in for FFI::Struct that provides automatic accessors for struct members, optional automatic memory management, more instance initialization options, pretty to_s and inspect methods, and other niceties.

  • NiceFFI::OpaqueStruct: a base class for structs with no user-exposed members. Useful when the struct definition is hidden by the underlying C library.

Nice-FFI was originally developed as part of Ruby-SDL-FFI [2].

  1. Ruby-FFI: github.com/ffi/ffi

  2. Ruby-SDL-FFI: github.com/jacius/ruby-sdl-ffi/

Caveats

Nice-FFI is still in EARLY DEVELOPMENT STAGES. That means:

  • It may not work correctly (or at all).

  • It may not be complete.

  • It may change drastically with no advanced notice.

As such, this library is currently FOR THE ADVENTUROUS ONLY. If you are not willing to continuously update your code to match the new API, then you should wait until version 1.0.

Requirements

  • Ruby-FFI >= 0.5.0 (or compatible FFI implementation)

Usage

See docs/usage.rdoc for usage information.

License

Nice-FFI is licensed under the following terms (the “MIT License”):

Copyright © 2009-2010 John Croisant

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.