28 Bigloo Libraries

Bigloo libraries are collections of global bindings (global variables and global functions). Bigloo libraries are built on the top of the host operating system (e.g. Unix) libraries. Because Bigloo uses modules, a library is not only a bundle of compiled codes and memory locations. A Bigloo library is split into several files:

• one heap that describes the variables and functions of the library.
• several host library files (safe and unsafe versions of the compilation and also eval libraries that contain the code that binds the variables and functions to the evaluator).
• possibly, C header files.
• possibly, an initialization file.

Let’s consider, for example, a library that implements the format Common Lisp facility. Let’s suppose we name this library bformat and that the library number is 1.0. Using a Unix machine, the Bigloo library will consist of the following files:

• bformat.heap: the heap file.
• bformat.init: the initialization file.
• libbformat_s-1.0.a, libbformat_s-1.0.so, libbformat_u-1.0.a, libbformat_u-1.0.so, libbformat_eu-1.0.so, and libbformat_es-1.0.so:: the Unix library files. The file names with a _u are libraries compiled in unsafe and optimized mode. By convention the library using the _s suffix are safe libraries, _p are profiling libraries, _d debug libraries, _es and _eu eval libraries.
• bformat.h: an include file.

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