[Pipet Devel] Re: Overflow/Loci/GMS collaboration

[Brad Chapman]

Jarl wrote:
> That's depending on the technical possibilities mostly. I'll try to 
get
> familiair with python-C hooks, I cant judge the possibilities right 
now.
> Anyone
> knows more about this?

When I was proposing this, I was thinking of the small middle which we 
currently have talking to Overflow and GMS through corba (ie. GMS 
could keep the same structure it currently has, but would talk to the 
middle that we currently have instead of directly to the front.
    Of course, it would also be possible to wrap the C and C++ classes 
so they can be called from python. There is a tutorial about this on 
the python documentation web site (http://www.python.org/doc/) called 
"Extending and Embedding." The C API which is used to connect outside 
classes with the python core code is also documented there ("Python/C 
API"). There are also C++ classes that sit on top of these C classes 
which make wrapping C++ possible.
    There is also a tool to do these wrappings semi-automatically 
called SWIG (http://www.swig.org/). I've heard both good and bad 
things about this, but it is also a possibility is we use the method 
of directly embedding the C/C++ classes to be callable from a python 
middle.

Brad