[Python.NET] Python 2.5 compatibility and interop.cs

[Christian Heimes]

Brian Lloyd wrote:
> I'm pretty sure there were some changes to type structures in 2.5, so
> probably the only sane thing to do would be to do a 2.5-specific branch :(
> 
> The interop stuff is some fairly deep voodoo - it essentially generates a
> bunch of thunks and wrappers matching the in-memory layouts of various
> python type objects and things. What would need to be done is an assessment
> of what changed in 2.5, then go into interop and change / add offsets etc.
> accordingly. I can say with some experience that it won't be fun ;)
> 
> My available time (and the fact that IronPython gets 99% of the oxygen
> these days) means that I probably won't be able to get to this any time
> soon, but I'd be more than happy to help anyone who wants to take this on
> in any way I can.

The docs don't mention a change to the type structure between 2.4 and
2.5. So far I found just two changes to the C api which may effect
pythonnet:

* C API: Many functions now use Py_ssize_t instead of int to allow
processing more data on 64-bit machines. Extension code may need to make
the same change to avoid warnings and to support 64-bit machines. See
the earlier section 10 for a discussion of this change.

* C API: The obmalloc changes mean that you must be careful to not mix
usage of the PyMem_*() and PyObject_*() families of functions. Memory
allocated with one family's *_Malloc() must be freed with the
corresponding family's *_Free() function.

But I suspect that internal changes to Include/object.h and children
aren't mentioned in the migration docs. Dealing with memory addresses
and offsets brings back memory from a time before I started to use
Python ... I'll discuss it with my buddies. We may take the challenge.
We don't have another choice since pythonnet looks like the easiest way
to integrate our C# / .NET 2.0 library in Blender.

Can you give me some tips how you debugged and created interops.cs when
you developed the project? What tools were/are you using? Since
pythonnet doesn't compile under Linux and Mono I suspect that I'm
restricted to MS VS 2005. I can offer you a more direct communication
channel (IRC freenode.net, ICQ, Jabber, MSN and Skype if you can stand
my German accent ;) ).

Christian