Re: [Ctypes-devel] cinvoke

[Thomas H. <th...@py...>]

Eyal Lotem <eya...@gm...> writes:

> Hi. I am working to create a project similar in scope to ctypes, but
> with a different implementation.
>
> I would like to get your opinions and feedback about what advantages
> or disadvantages you think it has compared to ctypes.

I've only looked briefly at the code, so I don't have detailed comments.
One disadvantage I see so far is that cinvoke would only work when
compiled with gcc on an x86 system - correct?

Then: ctypes is used to call functions in dlls/shared libraries, without
the need to write a Python extension.  It seems (but I can only guess
here, you have to provide use cases, rationales, and code examples),
that cinvoke is compiled into a C application, and allows to call
functions in that program from another process.  So, is this to allow to
script applications?

And, let me ask:  What's your real use case, and why can't you use
ctypes for that?

> Also wondering why ctypes does not have a separate type library, a
> generic one, just for describing types, and a separate component to
> use those types to call functions.

There are several Python modules to allow access and manipulate C
compatible data structures, the standard struct module, higher level
wrappers around the struct module, and ctypes-lookalike type module (Bob
Ippolito has 'ptypes', iirc).  Personally, I don't have a large need to
manipulate these structures without beeing able to pass them to
C-functions, so for me it makes no sense to separate them.

Finally, function pointers are also C data types, so the separation
between the type library and the 'call' module is not so clear.  And,
nowadays ctypes is portable to quite a lot of systems (with the help of
libffi, of course).

Thomas