Re: [orbitcpp-list] Support for any in pyIDL

[Phil D. <ph...@or...>]

Gordon Miller wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I've been a lurker here for a few weeks and have been toying with the
> Orbit-C++ code for a few versions now.  I am a very experienced C++ and
> Python programmer (8 years C++ and 5 or so for python) and have been
> doing CORBA for about 5 years now though the previous 2 have been using
> Java.  I am very interested in helping out the C++ binding effort that
> you guys have started.  My immediate goals are to work with the ORBIT
> event service, but I much prefer writing C++ so I'd like to help this
> effort out as much as possible.

Cool - we could certainly do with the help!

> I'm currently trying to compile the CosEventComm.idl that has any's as
> arguments to some of the methods.  It's choking on the any's in the
> tree_factory method of pyIdl.py  The nodetype is 29 which, of course, is
> the IDLN_TYPE_ANY.  I did a clean checkout of the source this morning
> from gnome so I'm pretty sure I have the latest source.
> 
> In the ORBit-C++ web page, Phil gives some guidelines for dealing with
> new types.  Is this something that I should go ahead and work on or
> not?
> 

Please do! I'm currently working on sequences, and Ron I think is
having problems with segfaults on solaris (did you manage to get any
further Ron? I haven't had the solaris box back to try yet), and
judging from the ORBit list has been working on that too. I don't
think you'd be stepping on anybody's toes.

The text is a bit out of date on the web page (must fix that!). Rather 
than bothering with the templates directory stuff, just hack what you
need to. The templates directory was there so that people could work
on things while the idl compiler was in a state of flux (and also
because lots of people don't know python) - both of those aren't
issues now.

I think your best bet would be to start with adding ANY support to
pyIDL. I've just written some text in HACKING files in the pyIDL/src
and pyIDL/test directories which should help you get started. I'm
afraid that means you'll need to do another cvs update.

After that, I usually create a new test in the test directory, and use
that as a basis to build the IDL compiler (I'm quite a fan of coding
through a test harness - you might have noticed ;-).


> Thanks and I'm looking forward to being able to contribute, even if
> nothing more than documentation.

I look forward your conributions!

Cheers,

Phil.

BTW, do you already have gnome cvs write access? If not, in the short
term I prefer unified diff style patches. (cvs diff -u or something
like that).