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by coldtea 1621 days ago
>They already have it, and they call it a header file

Some languages already use that for the purpose, but it's an ill fit. It's meant for the internal parser of the language, so you need to parse C code (even if it's just the header file syntax). And it wasn't created with FFI in mind, in the first place.

What I propose is a file intended for others wanting to FFI, and thus trivial to parse (could be a schema for a format with ubiquitus parsers, like XML, JSON, YAML, TOML, and co).

That would have the benefit of:

(1) being cross-language (every language that exposes functions with C calling conventions could produce such a file to allow others to interface with it.

(2) being trivial to parse and integrate with ffi facilities of different languages (e.g. ctypes)

(3) being extensible beyond the C-header files give (e.g. metadata about usage, or valid int ranges, even function documentation, etc).