[LV2] lv2_descriptor() considered harmful

[Stefan Kersten]

On 3/15/12 6:31 PM, David Robillard wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-03-15 at 18:24 +0100, Stefan Kersten wrote:
>> On 3/15/12 6:17 PM, David Robillard wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2012-02-26 at 17:03 -0500, David Robillard wrote:
>>>> /**
>>>>      Prototype for library accessor function.
>>>>
>>>>      This is the entry point for a plugin library.  Hosts load this
>>>>      symbol from the library and call this function to obtain a
>>>>      library descriptor which can be used to access all the UIs
>>>>      contained in this library.  The returned object must not be
>>>>      destroyed (using LV2_Lib_Descriptor::cleanup()) until all
>>>>      plugins loaded from that library have been destroyed.
>>>> */
>>>> LV2_Lib_Descriptor const*
>>>> lv2_lib_descriptor(const char*                bundle_path,
>>>>                      const LV2_Feature *const * features);
>>>>
>>>> /**
>>>>      Type of the lv2_lib_descriptor() function in an LV2 library.
>>>> */
>>>> typedef LV2_Lib_Descriptor const*
>>>> (*LV2_Lib_Descriptor_Func)(const char*                bundle_path,
>>>>                              const LV2_Feature *const * features);
>>>
>>> Should we perhaps avoid requiring a dlsym of a function, which is
>>> technically not portable and usually a cause of at least a warning?
>>
>> could you elaborate why it's not portable?
>
> Standard C does not allow casting between function and data pointers.
>
> I am not sure how it impacts real world platforms.

hmm, but then on a platform where pointers to text and data are treated 
differently then surely you would have a version of dlsym that returns a 
function pointer? iow dlsym already is platform dependent and should do 
the right thing?

<sk>