Re: [agtk-devel] AGLIB tcl binding

[Haejoong L. <hae...@un...>]

> We're making use of the tcl binding just now. I'm wondering why it doesn't 
> use namespaces, eg AG::CreateAG rather than AG_CreateAG? Is it too late to 
> change this now, it would be useful to us in one respect, we're creating a 
> version of the API that stores undo information for certain operations and 
> having the API as a namespace might make it easier to override the API calls 
> we want to save undo info for.  

I think I'm the person who is responsible for most of the suggestions.
I can't see exactly how "undo" stuff works. However, having a namespace
sounds great.  To be honest, I didn't even know that Tcl support
namespace. I'm not a Tcl programmer :)


> Secondly, the tcl wrapper doesn't install itself very nicely, I should be 
> able to say 'package require AG' to load the library.  I've begun to work out 
> how to do this but I'm having trouble comprehending the build system and 
> where the locations of libraries are specified.  Basically to make things 
> work in the Tcl Way the package should be installed in a subdirectory 
> adjacent to the tcl installation (eg /usr/local/lib/ag) looking like this:
> 
> ag/
>     ag.tcl
>     pkgIndex.tcl
>     ag_tcl.so *
> 
> at the moment the .tcl and .so files go in /usr/local/lib. Since the .so 
> files depend on other shared libraries (agf_tcl.so etc) then having them in 
> /usr/local/lib isn't unreasonable but it does make the whole thing a little 
> messy.   

I agree with you. Since we have multiple wrappers (currently two),
the following would be better:

    ag_wrapper/
        tcl/
            ag.tcl
            ag_tcl.so
            pkgIndex.tcl
        python/
            ag.py
            ag_python.so
    

> How hard (and desirable) would it be to combine the libraries into a smaller 
> number of shared objects.  Perhaps a core libag.so and then the language 
> bindings libag_tcl.so libag_python.so etc.  Since libag.so gets linked 
> against C++ code it would go in the standard lib directory, the others could 
> go where the scripting language could find them.  There might also be an 
> option to combine the lot into one shared object.  Then, when I'm shipping a 
> package based on AGLIB, the number of files and their interdependancies is 
> minimised.  

So we have some options here:

    (libag + libagf), (tcl wrapper), (python wrapper)
    (libag + libagf + tcl wrapper), (libag + libagf + python wrapper)
    (libag + libagf + tcl wrapper + python wrapper)

I guess you meant the first choice. That is probably a good idea.
The second doesn't look good because of the redundency.  The third
looks more complex. The single all-in-one library creates a large set
of dependencies. Python user may not want to install Tcl to use the
library.


> I don't know automake/libtool well enough to know how to make this happen. 
> I'm happy to help with code etc. to make the tcl package neater and more 
> useable. 

It would be great if you can give us more detailed direction about
namespace stuff. A sample modification would be also useful. After
discussion with ag team, I can work on ag wrapper installation and
library merging.

Thank you very much for the input.

Haejoong