[C++-sig] problems with typedef void *

[Roman Yakovenko]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Jacob Davis <jacob at davisphoto.net> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Jim Bosch <talljimbo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think you'll want to define a custom wrapper class for each of these
>> typedefs with a distinct type.  From your example, it looks like many of
>> these might be similar enough that you could use a template:
>>
>> [snip]
>
>>
>> Now, for all the other (non-constructor/destructor) functions that take
>> these, you'll need to write a function wrapper that takes arguments by the
>> wrapper classes, calls the C function, and returns using the wrapper classes
>> (you'll have to think about ownership semantics in that case, of course).
>>  Then you can use Boost.Python to wrap the wrapper functions.
>>
>  [snip]
>
>>
>> Finally, I wouldn't normally recommend SWIG, because I think Boost.Python
>> is generally much better, especially for wrapping C++ code.  But in this
>> case, since you're wrapping pure C using a lot of opaque pointers, SWIG's
>> approach might be a better fit, since its code generation naturally
>> considers everything an opaque pointer.  If you don't have to use
>> Boost.Python for other reasons, it might be worth a look, at least.
>>
>>
> Thanks Jim!  I kind of expected that I would need to do wrapper classes and
> functions, but was hoping it wouldn't quite come to that. I Niall's patch
> doesn't work out well, I might just do this. As for SWIG, I considered it,
> but chose Boost for the sake of learning a bit more about it. Maybe it would
> be wise to just scrap it and go with SWIG though.
>
>
>From my experience, if you have to expose a C API and you have a dynamic
library, the best way to access it is to use ctypes (which comes with
Python). If the API is pretty complex, then you can create a facade to it,
but already in Python. ctypes module removes a huge amount of headaches.

HTH
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