Dryverl: a flexible Erlang/C binding compiler

Abstract

This article introduces Dryverl, an Erlang/C binding code generator. Dryverl aims at becoming the most abstract, open and efficient tool for implementing any Erlang/C bindings, as either C port drivers, C port programs, or C nodes. The most original feature of Dryverl is to provide users with open Erlang/C bindings, similar to distributed bindings in open distributed processing systems, to allow specifying programmatically the data transformations that must often be performed in Erlang/C bindings. Implementation details are hidden to developers, and implementation differences between port drivers, port programs, and nodes are abstracted by Dryverl, and Dryverl aims at generating the most efficient implementations possible for every target mechanism.