Generic Flint-style rings in C using void pointers + context objects.
The idea is to support fully generic recursive constructions of rings (polynomials, fractions, power series, matrices, etc.) over arbitrary user-defined base rings.
- Small code size, fast compilation.
- Possible to pack data efficiently (down to 1 byte / element).
- Plain C, similar interface to existing Flint code.
- Data layouts backwards compatible with most existing Flint types.
- Support all unusual cases in Flint/Arb/Calcium uniformly (error handling, inexact rings, noncomputable rings, context objects), with a uniform interface.
- Support fast stack based allocation of temporary variables and arrays (with safe limits).
- Fully in-place operations.
- Allow fast (a few cycles) runtime construction of context objects. (May be on the order of hundreds of cycles when constructing a new method table; this could be optimized.)
- Possibility to use generic default methods or provide optimized versions (e.g. for vector operations).
- Potentially a few cycles overhead for each dynamic function lookup and function call. Precludes intra-method compiler optimizations and inlining (however, providing custom vector methods should partially compensate for this).
- Less compiler protection against type errors.
- Some function call signatures need to change in ways that make the interface less convenient (for uniformity).