[BangPypers] SWIG

[bhaskar jain]

The SWIG documentation is pretty detailed -
http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Sections.html
SWIG has  a concept of pointer ownership which it uses to manager pointers.
The interface files contain the C function declarations and variable
declarations. The wrapper function generated is the 'glue' between the
scripting language and the underlying C function.

Only concern is there may be some 'code bloat'

--Bhaskar.



On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 8:26 AM, bhaskar jain <bhaskar.jain2002 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for the response.
>
> What i faced was intentionally passing unexpected/nonsense data cause
> segmentation fault in one case. Was wondering if this is because of SWIG or
> because of the underlying library (which in turn uses glib). But the
> underlying library looks ok. Have you faced such issues while working with
> SWIG. Is it reliable to be used in production level code which will be
> pretty load intensive.
>
> Also who frees the pointers in case of python binding? Some functions say
> the caller should free the pointer but in case of python binding  does the
> python memory manager frees it using the standard reference count.
>
> I believed the interface file (.i file) has to be hand-written. Can you
> please elaborate on the Makefile approach.
>
> --Bhaskar.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Gora Mohanty <gora at srijan.in> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:04:01 +0530
>> bhaskar jain <bhaskar.jain2002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> > Problem is that there was a bug and they have changed a few lines
>> > in one of the C files. So my question is - will just applying the
>> > patch and installing the library again, will i get a fresh good
>> > python binding or do i need to regenerate the wrapper_ *.c files
>> > using SWIG.
>>
>> It depends on what was changed, but it is best to regenerate
>> everything. Is this that much of a concern in terms of time,
>> etc. It is quite easy to set up a Makefile to do this.
>>
>> > Any tips in working with SWIG, using the python bindings will be
>> > appreciated. Also is it a frequent problem of segmentation faults
>> > using the python bindings of C programs which employ lot of
>> > pointers. Sorry, I am new to SWIG.
>> >
>> > Is it advisable to use SWIG at all?
>> [...]
>>
>> I would enthusiastically advocate SWIG, but have had arguments with
>> people who take a different view, and whose opinions I respect. The
>> best counter-arguments I have heard is cleanness of the generated
>> code, and efficiency, but at least for a non-pedal-to-the-metal
>> coder like me, SWIG definitely does the job. So, I would say that
>> if you can take a look at the generated SWIG code, and think that
>> you can do better, please do that, and contribute your approach
>> back to SWIG.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Gora
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>>
>
>
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