alt Hacker NewsI was reading the `fontconfig` source recently (to help me understand what, exactly, is the difference between the various `fc-*` tools and their options) and some of the code scared me.
I thought, "for sure this is a use-after-free" ... but it happened to be safe because some function performed an undocumented incref, and the return value of that function was kept alive.
So this is definitely a high priority thing to port!
... I suppose the interesting question is: if some of my dependencies are ported, and some are not, is there any way a normal compiler can call into a Fil-C-compiled library for just a few functions?
> ... I suppose the interesting question is: if some of my dependencies are ported, and some are not, is there any way a normal compiler can call into a Fil-C-compiled library for just a few functions?
To my understanding, there's no way to do this: Fil-C is basically a managed runtime for native code, so the FFI implications are similar to those for Go or any other intrusive managed runtime. Which is to say that Fil-C could offer an FFI, but not without losing the blanket exit-instead-of-memory-unsafety guarantees it aims to offer.