Ruby-FFI https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki
Description
Ruby-FFI is a gem for programmatically loading dynamically-linked native libraries, binding functions within them, and calling those functions from Ruby code. Moreover, a Ruby-FFI extension works without changes on CRuby (MRI), JRuby, Rubinius and TruffleRuby. Discover why you should write your next extension using Ruby-FFI.
Features
- Intuitive DSL
- Supports all C native types
- C structs (also nested), enums and global variables
- Callbacks from C to Ruby
- Automatic garbage collection of native memory
- Usable in Ractor: How-to-use-FFI-in-Ruby-Ractors
Synopsis
require 'ffi'
module MyLib
extend FFI::Library
ffi_lib 'c'
attach_function :puts, [ :string ], :int
end
MyLib.puts 'Hello, World using libc!'
For less minimalistic and more examples you may look at:
- the
samples/
folder - the examples on the wiki
- the projects using FFI listed on the wiki: https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki/projects-using-ffi
Requirements
When installing the gem on CRuby (MRI), you will need:
- A C compiler (e.g., Xcode on macOS,
gcc
orclang
on everything else) Optionally (speeds up installation): - The
libffi
library and development headers - this is commonly in thelibffi-dev
orlibffi-devel
packages
The ffi gem comes with a builtin libffi version, which is used, when the system libffi library is not available or too old. Use of the system libffi can be enforced by:
gem install ffi -- --enable-system-libffi # to install the gem manually
bundle config build.ffi --enable-system-libffi # for bundle install
or prevented by --disable-system-libffi
.
On Linux systems running with PaX (Gentoo, Alpine, etc.), FFI may trigger mprotect
errors. You may need to disable mprotect for ruby (paxctl -m [/path/to/ruby]
) for the time being until a solution is found.
On FreeBSD systems pkgconf must be installed for the gem to be able to compile using clang. Install either via packages pkg install pkgconf
or from ports via devel/pkgconf
.
On JRuby and TruffleRuby, there are no requirements to install the FFI gem, and require 'ffi'
works even without installing the gem (i.e., the gem is preinstalled on these implementations).
Installation
From rubygems:
[sudo] gem install ffi
From a Gemfile using git or GitHub
gem 'ffi', github: 'ffi/ffi', submodules: true
or from the git repository on github:
git clone git://github.com/ffi/ffi.git
cd ffi
git submodule update --init --recursive
bundle install
rake install
Install options:
--enable-system-libffi
: Force usage of system libffi--disable-system-libffi
: Force usage of builtin libffi--enable-libffi-alloc
: Force closure allocation by libffi--disable-libffi-alloc
: Force closure allocation by builtin method
License
The ffi library is covered by the BSD license, also see the LICENSE file. The specs are covered by the same license as ruby/spec, the MIT license.
Credits
The following people have submitted code, bug reports, or otherwise contributed to the success of this project:
- Alban Peignier alban.peignier@free.fr
- Aman Gupta aman@tmm1.net
- Andrea Fazzi andrea.fazzi@alcacoop.it
- Andreas Niederl rico32@gmx.net
- Andrew Cholakian andrew@andrewvc.com
- Antonio Terceiro terceiro@softwarelivre.org
- Benoit Daloze eregontp@gmail.com
- Brian Candler B.Candler@pobox.com
- Brian D. Burns burns180@gmail.com
- Bryan Kearney bkearney@redhat.com
- Charlie Savage cfis@zerista.com
- Chikanaga Tomoyuki nagachika00@gmail.com
- Hongli Lai hongli@phusion.nl
- Ian MacLeod ian@nevir.net
- Jake Douglas jake@shiftedlabs.com
- Jean-Dominique Morani jdmorani@mac.com
- Jeremy Hinegardner jeremy@hinegardner.org
- Jesús García Sáez blaxter@gmail.com
- Joe Khoobyar joe@ankhcraft.com
- Jurij Smakov jurij@wooyd.org
- KISHIMOTO, Makoto ksmakoto@dd.iij4u.or.jp
- Kim Burgestrand kim@burgestrand.se
- Lars Kanis lars@greiz-reinsdorf.de
- Luc Heinrich luc@honk-honk.com
- Luis Lavena luislavena@gmail.com
- Matijs van Zuijlen matijs@matijs.net
- Matthew King automatthew@gmail.com
- Mike Dalessio mike.dalessio@gmail.com
- NARUSE, Yui naruse@airemix.jp
- Park Heesob phasis@gmail.com
- Shin Yee shinyee@speedgocomputing.com
- Stephen Bannasch stephen.bannasch@gmail.com
- Suraj N. Kurapati sunaku@gmail.com
- Sylvain Daubert sylvain.daubert@laposte.net
- Victor Costan
- beoran@gmail.com
- ctide christide@christide.com
- emboss Martin.Bosslet@googlemail.com
- hobophobe unusualtears@gmail.com
- meh meh@paranoici.org
- postmodern postmodern.mod3@gmail.com
- wycats@gmail.com wycats@gmail.com
- Wayne Meissner wmeissner@gmail.com