# Julia Interop / FFI / Smalltalk

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-interop-ffi-smalltalk/61854>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [May 26, 2021, 1:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-interop-ffi-smalltalk/61854 "2021-05-26T13:19:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![threadedblue](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/threadedblue/32/19247_2.png) [@threadedblue](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/threadedblue)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2021, 1:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-interop-ffi-smalltalk/61854/1 "2021-05-26T13:19:49Z")

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I have come up with a need to call Julia from–wait for it–SmallTalk. If you are familiar with Pharo or Squeak, that’s where I want to call from–mostly from Pharo.

I see that Pharo supports FFI, but the docs focus mostly on calling C and not much else. I see in Julia that ccall is good for calling C, but I don’t see much on calling Julia from anywhere.

Q: Calling Julia from Smalltalk, can I get there from here? Or is there going to be some heavy lifting?

I realize I can do a microservice and call a Julia HTTP server. I can also do some kind of MQ thing. But I would like to simply make a local call to Julia.

I have a remote cluster with many datas in it and some substantial Julia modules also in the mix. Distribution/Parallel are appealing for the backend. It’s the front-end that is grieving me at the moment. Notebooks are not measuring up. I see things I would like to take advantage of already working in Pharo, hence this post.

If you read this far, thanks for your patience.

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**Author:** ![oxinabox](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/oxinabox/32/206603_2.png) [@oxinabox](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/oxinabox)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2021, 1:50pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-interop-ffi-smalltalk/61854/2 "2021-05-26T13:50:15Z")

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I have no experience in doing this but i think you want this section fo the docs

[https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/embedding/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/embedding/)

where you use Pharo’s ability to FFI call C etc to call `libjulia`

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**Author:** ![threadedblue](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/threadedblue/32/19247_2.png) [@threadedblue](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/threadedblue)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2021, 2:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-interop-ffi-smalltalk/61854/3 "2021-05-26T14:06:10Z")

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Thanks

I had skipped embedded because I thought it was about Julia in devices. But it sounds like it might work.