github.com/phst/emacs

Go bindings for the Emacs module API

This package implements Go bindings for the GNU Emacs module API.

This is not an officially supported Google product.

Usage

See the package documentation.

Implementation notes

The package assumes that ptrdiff_t and intmax_t have the same domain as int64_t. It also assumes that uintptr_t has the same domain as uint64_t. The C code uses static_assert to check these assumptions. The C standard guarantees that int64_t and uint64_t have exactly 64 bits without padding bits and that they use two’s complement representation. The corresponding Go types int64 and uint64 have the same representation. This means that converting int64_t and uint64_t to and from the Go types can never lose data.

The package requires at least Emacs 29. It provides optional support for some Emacs 30 features. Such optional features always require two additional checks:

// Check that emacs-module.h has static support for Emacs 30.
#if defined EMACS_MAJOR_VERSION && EMACS_MAJOR_VERSION >= 30
// Make sure the cast below doesn’t lose information.
static_assert(SIZE_MAX >= PTRDIFF_MAX, "unsupported architecture");
// Check that the Emacs that has loaded this module supports the function.
if ((size_t)env->size > offsetof(emacs_env, function)) {
  return env->function(env, …);
}
#endif
// Some workaround in case Emacs 30 isn’t available.

CGo doesn’t support calling C function pointers. Therefore, the code wraps all function pointers in the emacs_runtime and emacs_env structures in ordinary wrapper functions. The wrapper functions use only the int64_t and uint64_t types in their interfaces.

The package uses a global registry to identify exported functions.

You can compile the examples in the test files to form an example module. In addition to the examples, this also needs the file example_test.go to initialize the examples. The Emacs Lisp file test.el runs the examples as ERT tests.

To build and run all tests, install Bazel and run

bazel test //...