SWIG TO-DO ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** = High Priority *** = Implement if possible. ** = Will implement if time. * = Implement if bored (or deemed necessary). defer = Implement in next version CORE: **** Add support for nested classes. The type system should be defer ready to go. The primary obstacle lies in the target language modules (which were never programmed with nested classes in mind). There are also issues with nested C structures. For example: struct Foo { struct { int x,y; } z; }; This is one of the last remaining "hard" problems in the SWIG core, but it is important that we solve it. *** "Nested" typemaps. The basic idea is similar to allowing one to use $descriptor(T) for any T, rather than just $descriptor for the type currently being typemapped. In short (ha!), given a previously defined typemap: %typemap(in) Foo { // whatever it takes to initialize $1 from $input } it would be possible to inline its code inside another typemap. While the syntax is still to be defined, the use would be along the lines of: template class vector { %typemap(in) vector { ... for (int i=0; i $typemap(in, input=x) ( int FIRST = foo, double SECOND = bar ); The advantage of this syntax would be that the formal arguments (int FIRST, double SECOND) are close to the actual arguments (foo, bar). Comment by beazley $typemap(in, input=x) int = foo; is a little bit hard to parse in terms of variable substitution. I'm considering something like this: $typemap(in,1=int foo, input=x) Note: This is partially implemented in the new Unified Typemap Library(python,tcl,ruby and perl) via %fragments and the SWIG_From/SWIG_AsVal methdos. *** Implement $fail special variable substitution in wrappers. Used to properly transfer control out of a wrapper function while reclaiming resources. Note: Implemented in languages that uses the UTL via the 'SWIG_fail' macro. *** Rewrite declaration annotation to better unify %rename and related directives. Add a selector mechanism that allows specific parse tree nodes to be identified. For example: %feature("foo", nodetype="class") Foo { ... some code ... }; Consider use of wildcards. Namespace/nested scope support in %feature is currently weak. It works, but is fragile. Consider an implementation that is better integrated with symbol table management. Continue to consolidate SWIG directives to %feature. Note: Initial implementation in the %rename directive. *** Add more intelligent information related to object ownership. SWIG should be able to automatically strip ownership from objects when they are assigned to pointer variables and structure members as well as stored in a container (i.e., an array of pointers). [ Partially finished for Ruby/Perl/Tcl/Python. ] ** Restoration of the documentation system. [ Partially done for Python. ] ** Restoration of Objective-C support. ** Unification of symbol tables and type system scopes. In a sense they capture the same information so it is not necessary to have both. The existence of two symbol management systems is mostly historical. Build ----- Library ------- **** Add more support for the C++ standard library. std::complex and other core datatypes. Refine support for STL vector. Add more STL objects. [ Partially finished for Python. ] **** Continue to expand the set of recognized typemaps. Windows ------- All language modules -------------------- Python ------ *** Ability to wrap certain classes as Python built-in types. Perl ---- **** Rewrite runtime pointer type checking to better integrate shadow classes. Creation of shadow classes should be done in C instead of Perl. This will fix a number of problems related to typemaps and reduce the amount of Perl wrapper code. **** Create tests for existing support for operator overloading Tcl --- Ruby ---- **** The "Resource Management in Proxies" section of the "SWIG and C++" chapter discusses how proxies' ownership of their associated C++ object can change, and the use of the special disown() and acquire() methods to change this ownership status. Need to address this for Ruby as well. *** Add support for keyword arguments (by collecting them in a hash?). Java ---- C# -- PHP --- **** Look at moving to using the UTL. *** Director support. ** When returning wrapped objects via alternate constructors if that pointer value already exists "out there" as a resource we should use the same resource, we can't have multiple ref-counted resources mapping to the same object in case it gets twice destroyed. And check if ref count destroying is even working, see smart_pointer_rename * Work out how classes without even inherited constructors should interact with the php "new " notation. See: abstract_inherit_wrap.cpptest ** Look at pass by point and passby ref, Make sometype** to be auto allocated Make sometype& and sometype* to be autoallocated IF THEY ARE NOT ALREADY swigtype wrapped. * Review to see what else is missing! Guile ----- ** Maybe rename slot setters from CLASS-SLOT-set to CLASS-SLOT-set! to match Scheme convention for naming of mutators. ** Support keyword args. ** Director Support! ** Cleaner handling of multiple values. Use a typemap keyword argument "numoutputs" of "out" and "argout" to indicate how many values are returned. ** Make SWIG's types first-class by using a separate smob type for SWIG type descriptors; enable reflection on types. (Maybe GOOPS metaclasses?) ** Provide a clean way to construct type predicates. ** In GOOPS mode, maybe make overloaded functions methods. ** Increase the safety of destructor functions. John Lenz suggests: I think the best way of doing this would be to use %feature to mark which classes allow for "normal" smobs to be deleted explicitly. We separate pointers into two classes, those that can be deleted from scheme and those that can't. The pointers that can be deleted use the smob and those that can not be deleted use the smob. A user can specify which type of each object they want with %newobject and the CONSUMED typemap. By default, the exported destructor will only accept smobs, because by definition, collectable-swig smobs are those that can be deleted from scheme. This allows for the user to implement protection. In the interface file, the user has complete control over which objects can and can not be deleted, and can guarantee that objects that should not be deleted can not be deleted, and that objects that should eventually be deleted will be garbage collected. This protection can then be overridden with a %feature directive, something like %feature("guile_allow_destroy_all","1") Foo::~Foo; I don't know what word we want to use, guile_allow_destroy_all is kinda bad. This feature would then allow for a smob to be deleted by passing it to the destructor. This would allow users to maintain the protection on other classes, only manually overriding the protection on the classes that need it. Mzscheme -------- ** Port list-vector.i and pointer-in-out.i from Guile. ** Add shadow class support for the Swindle system. Pike ---- * Decide how to handle global variables (probably using something like the Python module's cvar). Affects Examples/pike/simple. * Decide how to handle static class member functions and member variables. * Should investigate the possibility of generating .cmod files in addition to straight C/C++ code for extensions. Common Lisp ----------- * Random thoughts by mkoeppe on supporting Common Lisp implementations: There are many different Foreign Function Interfaces (FFI) for the various CL implementations. Probably SWIG should interface to UFFI, a least-common-denominator FFI that supports many implementations. Via the s-expression SWIG module we can export SWIG's parse tree and import it into CL. It remains to check if all relevant information is dumped (for instance, the type information). Experimental code is available to generate low-level UFFI declarations from this parse tree. However, for wrapping C++, we also need to create C wrappers because most FFIs cannot directly import C++. A CL SWIG module could be exporting both these wrappers and UFFI declarations. I have experimental code (not checked in yet) that does this. This is fine for generating low-level wrappers. But how do we support user typemaps (like converting lists and vectors to C arrays on input)? We have to generate Lisp code that does the conversion and then calls the low-level wrapper. If we generate Lisp code, it should be beautiful and readable. Therefore, we need at least a Lisp pretty printer. A Lisp pretty printer works best when the Lisp program is represented not as text but as Lisp data. Moreover, typemap writers will feel very much constrained by SWIG's capabilities for generating wrapper code, when compared to writing Lisp macros. Thus we would need half a re-implementation of Lisp in SWIG to make users happy. The solution could be the following: ** Build a SWIG library (again) and load it into a Common Lisp implementation. The FFI declarations could be written manually, or this could be bootstrapped via the s-expression module or the primitive UFFI wrappers. This should be easy because SWIG's API is quite simple. The embedded SWIG would be driven by a CL program. High-level typemaps would be written as Lisp programs that generate Lisp code. ALLEGROCL ----- These first three will remove most of the warnings from most of the remaining checkpartial tests that are failing. **** Throws typemap support **** const typemaps **** long long typemaps Ocaml ----- ** I've been working with my camlp4 module and type information from the compiler. When I'm done, the user will have access to type inference when writing code, when the inference is unambiguous. This allows the user to write x = _foo 1.0 instead of x = get_float (_foo (C_float 1.0)). It's not as easy as it sounds, because O'caml doesn't keep type information at run time, and doesn't really have a mechanism for doing what I need. However, it's possible to write a preprocessor that inserts correct type info at compile time. That having been said, the program must compile for type info to be available, so I need to attend to a lot of details; The program must compile both with and without type augmentation. Xml --- Documentation ------------- **** Extending SWIG (and internals). *** Perl, Python, Tcl modules. *** add section for Perl module support for operator overloading ** Add section on WAD.