Libffi

lowercaseInfobox Software
name = libffi



caption =
developer = Anthony Green
latest_release_version = 3.0.6
latest_release_date = 17 July 2008
released = 7 October 1996
programming language = C, Assembly language
operating system = Unix-like, Cygwin, Mac OS, Bare metal
genre = Runtime library
license = BSD License
website = http://sourceware.org/libffi

libffi is a foreign function interface library. It provides a C programming language interface for calling natively compiled functions given information about the target function at runtime instead of compile time. It also implements the opposite functionality. libffi can produce a pointer to a function that can accept and decode any combination of arguments defined at runtime.

libffi is most often used as a bridging technology between compiled and interpreted language implementations.

Notable users include Python, PyObjC, RubyCocoa, gcj, GNU Smalltalk, IcedTea, Pawn and Squeak.

On Mac OS X libffi is commonly used with BridgeSupport, which provides programming language neutral descriptions of framework interfaces, and Nu which binds direct Objective-C access from Lisp.

libffi is highly portable and is released under a BSD license.

External links

* [http://sourceware.org/libffi libffi project page]
* [http://spindazzle.org/greenblog Anthony Green's blog]