[C++-sig] boost python to/from python type conversion

[James Amundson]

On 09/30/2009 11:48 PM, Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve wrote:
> lvalue_from_pytype only works for passing by value or const references/pointers, but that seems to match your case,
> since you MPI_Comm is passed by value to your sayhello().
>
> However, wrapping extern "C" isn't portable, AFAIK. You'll need a thin C++ wrapper for each of the C functions.
>    
Yes. I think you are right. I'm going to try that now.
> Did you consider writing a thin object-oriented wrapper around the raw MPI interfaces? Then it should be very straightforward to bind the wrapper with Boost.Python, and you'll have a more intuitive Python interface.
> E.g. make a class that owns MPI_Comm, passed as boost::python::object, and then give it a .sayhello() method using the comm data member.
>    

It's more complicated than that. mpi4py provides a nice object-oriented 
wrapper on the Python side. The mpi4py wrapper is based on the 
"standard" MPI C++ bindings. Unfortunately, older versions of MPI don't 
support the C++ bindings and MPI has decided that the bindings will be 
dropped in the future, so I really don't want to start using them now. I 
think I will do as you suggest and just write very thin wrappers around 
the C interfaces.

Thanks for your help.

--Jim Amundson