SIP v4.1 Released (C/C++ Wrapper Generator)

[Phil Thompson]

Riverbank Computing is pleased to announce the release of SIP v4.1 available 
from http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/.

SIP is a tool for generating Python modules that wrap C or C++ libraries.  It 
is similar to SWIG.  Its main use to date has been to generate PyQt and 
PyKDE. While SIP has been around since 1998, this is the first major release 
that is fully documented (see 
http://www.river-bank.demon.co.uk/docs/sip/sipref.html).

SIP is licensed under the Python License and runs on Windows, UNIX, Linux and 
MacOS/X.  SIP requires Python v2.3 or later (SIP v3.x is available to support 
earlier versions of Python).

This release includes the following changes:

- a new cast() function in the sip module
- a number of small enhancements to the C++ support
- the build system supports MSVC.NET.

Other features of SIP include:

- support for Python new-style classes
- generated modules are quick to import, even for large libraries
- support for Qt's signal/slot mechanism
- thread support
- the ability to re-implement C++ abstract and virtual methods in Python
- the ability to define Python classes that derive from abstract C++ classes
- the ability to spread a class hierarchy across multiple Python modules
- support for C++ namespaces
- support for C++ exceptions
- support for C++ operators
- an extensible build system written in Python that supports over 50
  platform/compiler combinations.