This page is going to talk about steps involved in fixing the Parrot API.

Function Renaming

All API functions should be renamed Parrot_<subsys>_<funcname>. Where <subsys> will be one of these two- or three-letter codes:

• gc: Garbage collector (in src/gc/*)
• ex: Exceptions
• pmc: PMC system
• oo: Object system
• io: IO system (in src/io/*)
• str: String system (in src/string/*)
• pcc: calling conventions (in src/call/*)
• int: Parrot interpreter (in src/interp/*)
• pf: Packfiles (in src/packfile/*)
• rc: Runcores (in src/runcore/*)
• jit: Just In Time compiler (in src/jit/*)
• ee: Extending and Embedding
• hll: High Level Languages
• mmd: multiple dispatch
• nci: native call interface
• cx: concurrency scheduler
• thr: Parrot threads

File Moving

Some files from src/* need to be moved into subdirectories and broken up into separate systems. For example, System "Foo" needs to be moved to /src/foo/*, where src/foo/api.c is the main public interface to the subsystem, src/foo/foo_private.h is the private header file for the subsystem, and other files are named src/foo/foo_*.c. Big files in src/* have priority for moving and breaking up into multiple files. Here are a list of some of the biggest (> 50kb) source files in src/:

• debug.c
• jit.c
• list.c
• packfile.c (could be moved together with packdump.c and packout.c)
• pmc_freeze.c
• thread.c