ORBit-Python

File Release Notes and Changelog

Release Name: 0.2.0

Notes:

Changes: Closer compliance the Python mapping spec; enhanced dynamic IDL (load_idl is no longer necessary in most cases); a small API for extension modules; compatability with Python 2.x; dozens of fixes for bugs and memory leaks.

Changes:

2001-04-02  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * Fixed a segfault in the transparent set accessor function.
   * Fixed a segfault in CORBA.TypeCode constructor when invalid
     arguments where given.

2001-04-02  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * Updated TODO list.
   * Built 0.2.0 release candidate.  Let's see what breaks. :)

2001-04-01  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * PortableServer.c/server.c: fixed a problem with delegation;
     activate_object now holds a reference to the servant, and 
     deactive_object releases it.
   * server.c: Fixed _this() so that it returns the servant's reference
     and not the servant itself, as per the spec.
   * idl.c: added a newline user exception names
   * server.c: Removed create_reference since ORBit hasn't implemented
     it yet.
   * Updated README and removed DOCS.  (Docs are on the website now.)

2001-03-29  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * idl.c: added support for forward declarations; fixed a small leak.
   * test-suite: Created an Instance.new_factory() function to test
     forward declarations

2001-03-28  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * process_idl.c: fix segfault if a bad path was specified from
     IDLPATH.  Thanks to Christian Reis for catching this one.
   * Fixed a bazillion warnings when compiling with Python 2.x
     (with -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes).  Thanks to Johan Dahlin for
     providing me a shell account to hack on.
   * CORBAmodule.c: Use PySequence_* instead of PyList_* for fromlist
     since Python 2.x uses a tuple while Python 1.x uses a list.
   * CORBAmodule.c: fixed a silly bug where the default IDLPATH
     gets a corrupted value causing a segfault in process_idl.c.
   * process_idl.c: completed step 2 from narrow_idl_file_list
   * Updated README and added TODO and DOCS

2001-03-28  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * CORBAmodule.c: default IDLPATH now includes /usr/share/idl and
     /usr/local/share/idl if they exist, as well as .
   * idl.c/CORBAmodule.c: removed some deprecated code
   * process_idl.c: significantly reworked the code to do things more
     intelligently.  It now handles:
         * Nested modules: e.g. import GNOME.Terminal
         * From lists: from GNOME import Terminal
           (the old code allowed this as well but it would auto-load
            every single IDL file that defined the GNOME module; this
            approach only loads Termina.idl)
         * From lists with wildcards: from Bonobo import * 
         * Can import interfaces on the from list:
              e.g. from GNOME.Terminal import TerminalFactory
     The new code is much faster at importing modules when you
     specify a from list since it now only loads only the IDL files
     necessary.  It will never load an IDL file twice, either.
   * Rename load_idl() to _load_idl() because it's an ORBit-Python-
     specific extension.
   * Added a binding for CORBA_ORB_shutdown (CORBA.ORB.shutdown) which
     takes 1 boolean argument (wait_for_completion).  Added this to
     the test suite in Fruit.Factory.die()
   * The CORBA module has an attribute _libidl_args which is a list of
     parameters that will be passed to libIDL when parsing IDL files.
     You can turn on specific defines for importing certain modules,
     such as Bonobo, or the Object Factory.  e.g.:

           import CORBA
           CORBA._libidl_args.append("-DGNOME_FACTORY_COMPILATION")
           from GNOME import ObjectFactory

     This is another ORBit-Python-specific extension, but I'm not sure
     how else to tackle the problem.
   * #define ORBIT_PYTHON_NOT_THREADED by default until I have a chance
     to make threads not broken.
   * Stepped version up to 0.2.0 in anticipation of its forthcoming
     release.  Woohoo!!

2001-03-27  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * Modified and merged a patch submitted by Johan Dahlin 
     <zilch.am@home.se>:
          * Added a _ORBitPython_API and a function struct, so certain
            functions can be accessed from another extenstion module.
          * Changed so CORBA__ORB_init does the init (CORBA_ORB_init) 
            and not CORBA_ORB_PyObject__new.  So extension modules can 
            create ORBs.
          * Add a init_orbit_python() macro to use in extension modules.
   * Created orbit-python.h and reorganized most of the objects' header
     files.  orbit-python.h is a public include for extensions that
     want to use ORBit-Python.  CORBAmodule.h still needs to be cleaned
     but it's getting better.

2001-03-19  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * process_idl.c: added simple benchmarking code.  Uncomment
     #define __BENCHMARK__ to enable.

2001-01-30  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * server.c: call __setattr__ and __getattr__ of servant if accessor
     methods are not implemented.

2001-01-28  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * the changes to the d_* macros to eliminate the gcc 2.96 warnings
     caused segfaults for other versions of gcc. *sigh*  Changes
     reverted.

2001-01-28  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * marshal.c: be able to marshal generic object references
   * demarshal.c: calculate the bytes left in the receive buffer properly
     (we think) and handle the incomplete message case when this value
     goes negative.  Sequences should now demarshal properly.  Since
     this code was taken from CORBA::ORBit, it also suffered from this
     bug.  Roland submitted a patch for this project.
   * test-server: we don't need to import whrandom anymore.
   * PortableServermodule.c: removed references to POAManager_PyObject
     and POA_PyObject from the PortableServer module.  This should take
     care of the undefined symbol problem with RTLD_GLOBAL vs. RTLD_LAZY.
     Right now this is just an empty module.  I'm going to have to rethink
     the interaction between the PortableServer and CORBA modules, and
     how PortableServer.POA and POAManager types fit in.
   * eliminated compiler warnings, including those horribly annoying
     "pasting would not give a valid pre-processing token" warnings with
     gcc 2.96
   * Made a d_warning macro that works the same way has d_message.  Used
     G_STMT_START and G_STMT_END so that these macros can have 
     conditionals and still work.

2001-01-28  Roland Mas  <mas@echo.fr>

   * Added test_list to test suite, as a test-case for the sequence
     demarshalling bug.

2000-11-30  Jason Tackaberry  <tack@linux.com>

   * CORBA_ORB.c: fixed string_to_object to trim trailing whitespace from
     the IOR

2000-09-07  Roland Mas  <mas@echo.fr>

   * added a #define and some #ifndef's to make it easy to temporarily
     comment out the (unfortunately buggy) thread-safe-ication code.  That
     code will probably have to go when the bug is fixed.
   * renamed init_*() to ORBit_Python_init_*() to avoid namespace conflict
     with Python 2.0 (a function named init_exceptions() appeared
     somewhere between Python 1.5.2 and Python 2.0, causing a bug).  Works
     fine with 2.0b1.

2000-08-28  Roland Mas  <mas@echo.fr>

   * src/marshal.c, src/demarshal.c: added *experimental* support for
     wstring type, mapped to a Python Unicode object.  Only works with
     Python >= 2.0 (e.g. from Sourceforge CVS).  Very likely *not* to be
     interoperable *at all* with other ORBs.

2000-08-27  Roland Mas  <mas@echo.fr>

   * src/server.c: added code to allow the server program to overload
     the _get_* and _set_* operations (with e.g. side effects).
   * src/server.c: fixed a compilation bug for current Python from CVS
     (the soon-to-be Python 2.0).

2000-08-26  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * server.c, client.c, CORBA_ORB.c: added necessary interpreter unlocking
     to support Python threads properly.  (Not very tested, but seems to
     work.)

2000-08-21  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * Completely rewrote the way IDL objects are handled internally to
     more closely comply with the spec.  (IDL modules are Python modules,
     interfaces are classes, etc.)
   * inheritance is now supported, as well as delegation.  Inheritance is
     preferred since the spec (while vague) seems to require it, whereas
     delegation is optional.
   * Complies with the mapping spec on mappings for module names.  import
     Module for client side, import Module__POA for server side.
   * servants support implicit activation through _this()
   * deprecated POA::the_POAManager in favor of POA::_get_the_POAManager()
   * Uses _GlobalIDL and _GlobalIDL__POA modules for the global IDL scope,
     which is compatible with omniORBpy and Fnorb.
   * Implemented preprocessing of IDL files at runtime to determine which
     IDL files offer which modules.  Implications on performance are yet
     to be determined.  This approach may not scale very well at all for
     hundreds of IDL files.  It also could be broken in some cases; the
     preprocessor is not a complete IDL parser, so it may not work 100%.
     Time shall tell.  Uses the IDLPATH environment variable to get a
     list of paths to scan, otherwise defaults to the current directory.
   * hook __import__ to automagically load IDL files discovered by the
     processor that are required for the requested module
   * Pass -D__ORBIT_IDL__ -D__BONOBO_COMPILATION to libIDL so that we can
     load Bonobo IDLs
   * introduced more memory leaks, and probably more bugs.


2000-08-18  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * PortableServer.c: fixed a leak in activate_object(); implemented
     reference_to_servant(); removed deprecated method RootPOA(); removed
     the _servant attribute from servant implementation instances (this
     was a hack anyway)
   * marshal.c: fixed a leak in marshal_sequence and marshal_struct
   * CORBAmodule.c: changed CORBA_Object_to_PyObject_hash to hash on
     addresses, not typecodes; CORBA_PyObject__dealloc now properly frees
     the CORBA object; moved PortableServer module initialization into a
     separate file and module (PortableServermodule.c)
   * server.c: freeing a servant will deactivate it if necessary; fixed
     various leaks and bugs with the servant destructor; fixed a leak with
     exceptions in operation_skel; new_poa_servant adds new servants to the
     CORBA_Object_to_PyObject_hash so they can be fetched by reference_to_
     servant()
   * fixed CORBA_Environment leaks all over the place
   * fixed a few other leaks that I can't remember 
   * various debugging information added; the debug level is inconsistent
     all over the place -- this will need to be fixed.
   * removed Instance::throw_away function from test-suite.idl, replaced
     with Factory::discard_instance(); some other small changes to the
     test server and clients.


2000-08-18  Roland Mas <mas@echo.fr>

   * Many memory leaks fixed by making static things that were previously 
     dynamically created and sometimes not deleted.
   * Some segfault-inducing bugs also fixed.
   * Some FIXMEs done.
   * The occasional code cleaning.

2000-03-21  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * marshal.c: marshal_float: promote ints to floats

2000-03-19  Jason Tackaberry <tack@linux.com>

   * Fixed a bug that fudged union discriminators.