Custom CLIPS backend

[yrashk]

I am wondering if you've thought about different mechanics of supplying different versions of CLIPS?

I see at least a few cases of immediate interest to me:

1. Compile-time settings. CLIPS allows for a variety of subsystems to be turned on and off.
2. New versions. I am now working with the upcoming 7.0 from svn which has some very interesting features like backward chaining, confidence factors, etc.

I'd be happy to help figuring this out if there's any interest.

[noxdafox]

Hello,

CLIPSPy is relying of libffi to provide interface between C and Python which means the binary needs to be compiled against compatible object. Hence, it is not possible to swap the internal back-end. This would work with a ctypes type of implementation if brave enough to go through all possible caveats.

Moreover, CLIPS changes pretty significantly between version to version. Version 7.0 will bring several new functions which will need to be wrapped accordingly.

Therefore, there is little benefit in providing custom back-ends. If compilation flags are to be changed, the suggestion is to build clipspy against the desired libclips. You can refer to the Makefile to see how the build is obtained. You can simply change the source you build against by using the CLIPS_SOURCE_URL make argument and then run make clipspy.

This was tested against, for example, FuzzyCLIPS back in the days and proved to work quite OK assuming the C project exposes the same functions.

[noxdafox]

Accidentally closed the issue while commenting.