SWIG / News: Recent posts

SWIG-4.2.1 is primarily a stability and regression fix release, but also includes:

• Tcl 9.0 support.
• Octave 9.0 support.
• Improvements wrapping friend functions.
• Variadic templated functions within a template support.
• Type deduction enhancements.

SWIG-4.2.0 summary:

• Various template wrapping improvements: template template parameters,
  variadic templates, partially specialized templates, const template
  parameters and improved error checking instantiating templates.
• Improved decltype() support for expressions.
• C++14 auto without trailing return type and C++11 auto variables.
• Numerous C++ using declarations improvements.
• Numerous fixes for constructors, destructors and assignment operators:
  implicit, default and deleted and related non-assignable variable
  wrappers.
• STL: std::array and std::map improvements, std::string_view support
  added.
• Various C preprocessor improvements.
• Various issues fixed to do with architecture specific long type.
• Various Doxygen improvements.
• D1/Tango support removed. D2/Phobos is now the supported D version
  and SWIG now generates code which works with recent D2 releases.
• New Javascript generator targeting Node.js binary stable ABI Node-API.
• Octave 8.1 support added.
• PHP7 support removed, PHP8 is now the supported PHP version.
• Python STL container wrappers now use the Python Iterator Protocol.
• Python stable ABI support added.
• Python 3.12 support added.
• Ruby 3.2 and 3.3 support.
• Scilab 2023.* support added.
• Various minor enhancements for C#, Go, Guile, Javascript, Lua, Ocaml,
  Perl, PHP, R, Racket, Ruby, Scilab and Tcl.
• A number of deprecated features have been removed.

SWIG-4.1.1 summary:

• Couple of stability fixes.
• Stability fix in ccache-swig when calculating hashes of inputs.
• Some template handling improvements.
• R - minor fixes plus deprecation for rtypecheck typemaps being optional.

SWIG-4.1.0 summary:

• Add Javascript Node v12-v18 support, remove support prior to v6.
• Octave 6.0 to 6.4 support added.
• Add PHP 8 support.
• PHP wrapping is now done entirely via PHP's C API - no more .php wrapper.
• Perl 5.8.0 is now the oldest version SWIG supports.
• Python 3.3 is now the oldest Python 3 version SWIG supports.
• Python 3.9-3.11 support added.
• Various memory leak fixes in Python generated code.
• Scilab 5.5-6.1 support improved.
• Many improvements for each and every target language.
• Various preprocessor expression handling improvements.
• Improved C99, C++11, C++14, C++17 support. Start adding C++20 standard.
• Make SWIG much more move semantics friendly.
• Add C++ std::unique_ptr support.
• Few minor C++ template handling improvements.
• Various C++ using declaration fixes.
• Few fixes for handling Doxygen comments.
• GitHub Actions is now used instead of Travis CI for continuous integration.
• Add building SWIG using CMake as a secondary build system.
• Update optional SWIG build dependency for regex support from PCRE to PCRE2.

SWIG-4.0.2 summary:

• A few fixes around doxygen comment handling.
• Ruby 2.7 support added.
• Various minor improvements to C#, D, Java, OCaml, Octave, Python, R, Ruby.
• Considerable performance improvement running SWIG on large interface files.

SWIG-4.0.1 summary:

• SWIG now cleans up on error by removing all generated files.
• Add Python 3.8 support.
• Python Sphinx compatibility added for Doxygen comments.
• Some minor regressions introduced in 4.0.0 were fixed.
• Fix some C++17 compatibility problems in Python and Ruby generated code.
• Minor improvements/fixes for C#, Java, Javascript, Lua, MzScheme, Ocaml, Octave and Python.

SWIG-4.0.0 summary

• Support for Doxygen documentation comments which are parsed and converted into JavaDoc or PyDoc comments.
• STL wrappers improved for C#, Java and Ruby.
• C++11 STL containers added for Java, Python and Ruby.
• Improved support for parsing C++11 and C++14 code.
• Various fixes for shared_ptr.
• Various C preprocessor corner case fixes.
• Corner case fixes for member function pointers.
• Python module overhaul by simplifying the generated code and turning most optimizations on by default.
• %template improvements wrt scoping to align with C++ explicit template instantiations.
• Added support for a command-line options file (sometimes called a response file).
• Numerous enhancements and fixes for all supported target languages.
• SWIG now classifies the status of target languages into either 'Experimental' or 'Supported' to indicate the expected maturity level.
• Support for CFFI, Allegrocl, Chicken, CLISP, S-EXP, UFFI, Pike, Modula3 has been removed.
• Octave 4.4-5.1 support added.
• PHP5 support removed, PHP7 is now the supported PHP version.
• Minimum Python version required is now 2.7, 3.2-3.7 are the only other versions supported.
• Added support for Javascript NodeJS versions 2-10.
• OCaml support is much improved and updated, minimum OCaml version required is now 3.12.0.

SWIG-3.0.12 summary:

• Add support for Octave-4.2.
• Enhance %extend to support template functions.
• Language specific enhancements and fixes for C#, D, Guile, Java, PHP7.

SWIG-3.0.11 summary:
- PHP 7 support added.
- C++11 alias templates and type aliasing support added.
- Minor fixes and enhancements for C# Go Guile Java Javascript Octave PHP Python R Ruby Scilab XML.

This release fixes a couple of important regressions in SWIG-3.0.9 for smart pointers and importing Python modules.

Summary of changes in SWIG-3.0.9

• Add support for Python's implicit namespace packages.
• Fixes to support Go 1.6.
• C++11 std::array support added for Java.
• Improved C++ multiple inheritance support for Java/C# wrappers.
• Various other minor fixes and improvements for C#, D, Go, Java, Javascript, Lua, Python, R, Ruby, Scilab.

SWIG-3.0.8 summary:
- pdf documentation enhancements.
- Various Python 3.5 issues fixed.
- std::array support added for Ruby and Python.
- shared_ptr support added for Ruby.
- Minor improvements for CFFI, Go, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby.

SWIG-3.0.7 release summary:
- Add support for Octave-4.0.0.
- Remove potential Android security exploit in generated Java classes.
- Minor new features and bug fixes.

SWIG-3.0.6 is mostly a stability release.

Release summary:
- Stability and regression fixes.
- Fixed parsing of C++ corner cases.
- Language improvements and bug fixes for C#, Go, Java, Lua, Python, R.

SWIG is a proud member of the Software Freedom Conservancy who has recently announced that they will be supporting a lawsuit to defend an alleged violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Ensuring this software license, the same one that protects the SWIG source code, is not abused and is actively defended in a court of law is important for everyone using the license. ... read more

We are pleased to announce SWIG-3.0.5 has been released with the addition of support for Scilab.

This version also contains:

• An important Python fix for a regression in SWIG-3.0.3 when wrapping C++ default arguments.
• Minor improvements for C#, Go, Octave, PHP and Python.

SWIG-3.0.4 was also released recently and contained part of the Python fix for the regression mentioned above. Python users should definitely rather use 3.0.5.

SWIG-3.0.3 release summary:
- Add support for C++11 strongly typed enumerations.
- Numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements for C#, D, Go, Java,
Javascript, PHP, Perl and Python wrappers.

More detailed release notes can be seen at http://swig.org/release.html

This release has been made to fix a bug during installation, but it also includes a couple of other rather minor changes.

SWIG-3.0.1 is another milestone release as it is the first version to contain support for Javascript.

Release summary:

• Javascript module added. This supports JavascriptCore (Safari/Webkit), v8 (Chromium) and node.js currently.
• A few notable regressions introduced in 3.0.0 have been fixed - in Lua, nested classes and parsing of operator <<.
• The usual round of bug fixes and minor improvements for C#, GCJ, Go, Java, Lua, PHP and Python.

This is a major new release focusing primarily on C++ improvements.

• C++11 support added. Please see documentation for details of supported
  features: http://www.swig.org/Doc3.0/CPlusPlus11.html
• Nested class support added. This has been taken full advantage of in
  Java and C#. Other languages can use the nested classes, but require
  further work for a more natural integration into the target language.
  We urge folk knowledgeable in the other target languages to step
  forward and help with this effort.
• Lua: improved metatables and support for %nspace.
• Go 1.3 support added.
• Python import improvements including relative imports.
• Python 3.3 support completed.
• Perl director support added.
• C# .NET 2 support is now the minimum. Generated using statements are
  replaced by fully qualified names.
• Bug fixes and improvements to the following languages:
  C#, Go, Guile, Java, Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, Octave, R, Ruby, Tcl
• Various other bug fixes and improvements affecting all languages.
• Note that this release contains some backwards incompatible changes
  in some languages.
• Full detailed release notes are in the changes file.
  See http://swig.org/release.html

SWIG-2.0.12 summary:
- This is a maintenance release backporting some fixes from the pending 3.0.0 release.
- Octave 3.8 support added.
- C++11 support for new versions of erase/insert in the STL containers.
- Compilation fixes on some systems for the generated Lua, PHP, Python and R wrappers.

SWIG-2.0.11 summary:
- Minor bug fixes and enhancements mostly in Python, but also
C#, Lua, Ocaml, Octave, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Tcl.

SWIG-2.0.10 summary:
- Ruby 1.9 support is now complete.
- Add support for Guile 2.0 and Guile 1.6 support (GH interface) has
been dropped.
- Various small language neutral improvements and fixes.
- Various bug fixes and minor improvements specific to C#, CFFI, D,
Java, Octave, PHP, Python,
- Minor bug fix in ccache-swig.
- Development has moved to Github with Travis continuous integration
testing - patches using https://github.com/swig/swig are welcome.

We have recently updated the SWIG legal page to provide clarification on the SWIG license. There has been some confusion as to how the GPL license may or may not affect the code generated by SWIG. Please take a look at the updated SWIG legal page.

We are indebted to the Software Freedom Law Center for all the help given in providing the legal explanations and for originally helping set up the license for version 2.0.

With the new year we have switched SWIG development to a new development model - Git on Github. The old Subversion history (including the even older CVS history) has been migrated and is now viewable in Github - https://github.com/swig/swig. If you have used SWIG we would really appreciate improvements you have made for incorporation into the mainline SWIG releases. So, feel free to use Github to fork and send your pull requests or patches.... read more