Re: [pygccxml-development] pyplusplus status

[Allen B. <al...@vr...>]

Roman:

As promised, here is a short list of the things I have found while using 
pyplusplus recently.

- 90% of users should never have to delve beyond the "easy API" (never 
need to know about creators). The current API is close to this, but 
there are still some times when IMHO users have to suddenly delve very 
deep into the internal code.

- template support: I would like to see an API that allows users to more 
easily wrap templates.  I have had to manually create some code that 
does this but I am sure something better could be done.  You can see 
what I have done at: 
https://realityforge.vrsource.org/viewvc/pyopensg/trunk/src/gen_bindings.py?view=markup  
Look for the TemplateBuilder helper class.

- Merging header files.  I have found it very helpful to specify a 
single temporary header file to the module builder that just includes 
all of the headers for the API I want to wrap.  This can result in 
significant speed increases when calling gccxml because the header files 
for a library often include much code in common.  It would be nice if 
the module builder had a flag in it's constructor (like: 
combine_headers) that would make pypp do this automatically.

- finalize():  I would really, really, really appreciate a true 
finalize() method being defined for all decls.  There are a lot of times 
where I know I want the class to be final so I don't want a wrapper or 
anything else extra.

- mdecl returns: See the thread "mdecl and methods that return values" 
from 5/30/2006.  This is a capability that I still very much need.
 
- Documentation
   - Summary: Make a simple, complete, tutorial document like the one 
for Pyste.  Just show how to do the things in the "easy API" that 90% of 
people want to do (see above)
   - simple, complete documentation of user API and what can be done
   - documentation for all paramemters of builder methods.
      - what does compilation_mode, start_with_declarations, etc do in 
__init__
      - Same with build_code_creator
      - what do the params do and how could/should they be used
   - How do I do this...  documentation of standard things a user wants 
to do
      - Pyste documentation is very good about this.
- Wrap method: Add API for just wrapping an existing method with a new 
defined method.  (right now this can be cone but you have to exclude the 
current method and then call add_code with a 'def'. It is just too 
complex for a new user and makes the wrapper gen script look complicated.)

- Add an API to ask if has decl and/or number of found decls

- Add ability to add user code to namespace or global *without* having 
to use code creators directly

- Cache parsing and preparing query optimizer.  If the input has not 
changed (the headers are the same) why do I have to wait for all the 
processing of the declarations and query optimization each time.  Can't 
we cache all of that?

- This is a small nitpick, but unless you are making a lot of money from 
Google AdSense, could you remove the Google ads in the table of contents 
on the website.  They are just annoying and make the documentation 
harder to read.

- Better job of not including platform specific files.  For example I 
have a binding right now that is adding 
/usr/include/c++/4.0.2/ext/mt_allocator.h as an include in all the 
files.  Needless to say this doesn't compile on windows. :(

- Performance improvements:  improving performance is always good.  The 
time waiting for all the code_creators to be created is especially long.


Comments?

-Allen

Roman Yakovenko wrote:

>Hi. I just want to describe what have been done and what I think should be done
>before next version will be ready to be released.
>
>Done:
>1. pyplusplus now preserves the order of generated code. I mean if you
>run pyplusplus
>    twice, than second run will not change any file. If you see a
>different behaviour, please
>    report a bug.
>
>2. Usability of pyplusplus has been improved. Now by default it will
>print only very important
>    messages:
>    1. gccxml command line ( printed text will start with "INFO" word )
>    2. declarations, that user asked to export, but for some reason,
>pyplusplus can
>        not export them ( ( printed text will start with "WARNING" word )
>    3. a list of updated(created) files ( printed text will start with
>"INFO" word )
>
>    It is possible to configure pyplusplus to print much more information:
>
>    import logger
>    from pyplusplus import module_builder
>    module_builder.set_logger_level( logging.DEBUG )
>
>3. pyplusplus is able to generate code for indexing suite v2.
>    You need explicitly to enable it:
>    mb = module_builder.module_builder_t( ..., indexing_suite_version=2 )
>
>    The documentation for this feature is in progress
>
>What still should be done?
>
>1. Georgiy Dernovoy contributed code, that extracts doxygen
>documentation from source
>    files. I will add code to pyplusplus that will generate documentation.
>
>2. I should find solution for long standing problem: the number of
>include directives
>    in generated source files.
>
>3. I am going to work a little on file_writers package. The main
>missing future here is
>   to add user code to generated source file.
>
>4. Documentation.
>
>For items (2) and (3), I'd like to know your opinion:
>    1. What code pyplusplus should generate?
>    2. How do you prefer to configure the feature? ( user interface )
>
>I don't want to set release day,  but from now I will try to keep
>source code in
>"release ready" mode. If you can try source code from "Subversion" and
>report bugs
>it will be grate.
>
>  
>