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Diffstat (limited to 'README')
| -rw-r--r-- | README | 342 |
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 316 deletions
@@ -12,318 +12,36 @@ code) in order to make the corresponding C/C++ libraries available to the listed languages, or to extend C/C++ programs with a scripting language. -This distribution represents the latest development release of SWIG. - Up-to-date SWIG related information can be found at http://www.swig.org A SWIG FAQ and other hints can be found on the SWIG Wiki: - http://www.dabeaz.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl - - -!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -!!!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!! -!!!!!!! !!!!!!! -!!!!!!! Previous SWIG-1.1 users should read the documentation !!!!!!! -!!!!!!! file Doc/Manual/SWIG.html before trying to use SWIG-1.3!!!!!!! -!!!!!!! on existing SWIG interfaces. This is the most current !!!!!!! -!!!!!!! documentation that describes new 1.3 features and !!!!!!! -!!!!!!! incompatibilities. !!!!!!! -!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - -What's New? -=========== - -SWIG-1.3.40 summary: -- SWIG now supports directors for PHP. -- PHP support improved in general. -- Octave 3.2 support added. -- Various bug fixes/enhancements for Allegrocl, C#, Java, Octave, Perl, - Python, Ruby and Tcl. -- Other generic fixes and minor new features. - -SWIG-1.3.39 summary: -- Some new small feature enhancements. -- Improved C# std::vector wrappers. -- Bug fixes: mainly Python, but also Perl, MzScheme, CFFI, Allegrocl - and Ruby - -SWIG-1.3.38 summary: -- Output directory regression fix and other minor bug fixes - -SWIG-1.3.37 summary: -- Python 3 support added -- SWIG now ships with a version of ccache that can be used with SWIG. - This enables the files generated by SWIG to be cached so that repeated - use of SWIG on unchanged input files speeds up builds quite considerably. -- PHP 4 support removed and PHP support improved in general -- Improved C# array support -- Numerous Allegro CL improvements -- Bug fixes/enhancements for Python, PHP, Java, C#, Chicken, Allegro CL, - CFFI, Ruby, Tcl, Perl, R, Lua. -- Other minor generic bug fixes and enhancements - -SWIG-1.3.36 summary: -- Enhancement to directors to wrap all protected members -- Optimisation feature for objects returned by value -- A few bugs fixes in the PHP, Java, Ruby, R, C#, Python, Lua and - Perl modules -- Other minor generic bug fixes - -SWIG-1.3.35 summary: -- Octave language module added -- Bug fixes in Python, Lua, Java, C#, Perl modules -- A few other generic bugs and runtime assertions fixed - -SWIG-1.3.34 summary: -- shared_ptr support for Python -- Support for latest R - version 2.6 -- Various minor improvements/bug fixes for R, Lua, Python, Java, C# -- A few other generic bug fixes, mainly for templates and using statements - -SWIG-1.3.33 summary: -- Fix regression for Perl where C++ wrappers would not compile -- Fix regression parsing macros - -SWIG-1.3.32 summary: -- shared_ptr support for Java and C# -- Enhanced STL support for Ruby -- Windows support for R -- Fixed long-standing memory leak in PHP Module -- Numerous fixes and minor enhancements for Allegrocl, C#, cffi, Chicken, Guile, - Java, Lua, Ocaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl. -- Improved warning support - -SWIG-1.3.31 summary: -- Python modern classes regression fix - -SWIG-1.3.30 summary: -- Python-2.5 support -- New language module: R -- Director support added for C# -- Numerous director fixes and improvements -- Improved mingw/msys support -- Better constants support in Guile and chicken modules -- Support for generating PHP5 class wrappers -- Important Java premature garbage collection fix -- Minor improvements/fixes in cffi, php, allegrocl, perl, chicken, lua, ruby, - ocaml, python, java, c# and guile language modules -- Many many other bug fixes - -SWIG-1.3.29 summary: -- Numerous important bug fixes -- Few minor new features -- Some performance improvements in generated code for Python - -SWIG-1.3.28 summary: -- More powerful renaming (%rename) capability. -- More user friendly warning handling. -- Add finer control for default constructors and destructors. We discourage - the use of the 'nodefault' option, which disables both constructors and - destructors, leading to possible memory leaks. Use instead 'nodefaultctor' - and/or 'nodefaultdtor'. -- Automatic copy constructor wrapper generation via the 'copyctor' option/feature. -- Better handling of Windows extensions and types. -- Better runtime error reporting. -- Add the %catches directive to catch and dispatch exceptions. -- Add the %naturalvar directive for more 'natural' variable wrapping. -- Better default handling of std::string variables using the %naturalvar directive. -- Add the %allowexcept and %exceptionvar directives to handle exceptions when - accessing a variable. -- Add the %delobject directive to mark methods that act like destructors. -- Add the -fastdispatch option to enable smaller and faster overload dispatch - mechanism. -- Template support for %rename, %feature and %typemap improved. -- Add/doc more debug options, such as -dump_module, -debug_typemaps, etc. -- Unified typemap library (UTL) potentially providing core typemaps for all - scripting languages based on the recently evolving Python typemaps. -- New language module: Common Lisp with CFFI. -- Python, Ruby, Perl and Tcl use the new UTL, many old reported and hidden - errors with typemaps are now fixed. -- Initial Java support for languages using the UTL via GCJ, you can now use - Java libraries in your favorite script language using gcj + swig. -- Tcl support for std::wstring. -- PHP4 module update, many error fixes and actively maintained again. -- Allegrocl support for C++, also enhanced C support. -- Ruby support for bang methods. -- Ruby support for user classes as native exceptions. -- Perl improved dispatching in overloaded functions via the new cast and rank - mechanism. -- Perl improved backward compatibility, 5.004 and later tested and working. -- Python improved backward compatibility, 1.5.2 and later tested and working. -- Python can use the same cast/rank mechanism via the -castmode option. -- Python implicit conversion mechanism similar to C++, via the %implicitconv - directive (replaces and improves the implicit.i library). -- Python threading support added. -- Python STL support improved, iterators are supported and STL containers can - use now the native PyObject type. -- Python many performance options and improvements, try the -O option to test - all of them. Python runtime benchmarks show up to 20 times better performance - compared to 1.3.27 and older versions. -- Python support for 'multi-inheritance' on the python side. -- Python simplified proxy classes, now swig doesn't need to generate the - additional 'ClassPtr' classes. -- Python extended support for smart pointers. -- Python better support for static member variables. -- Python backward compatibility improved, many projects that used to work - only with swig-1.3.21 to swig-1.3.24 are working again with swig-1.3.28 -- Python test-suite is now 'valgrinded' before release, and swig also - reports memory leaks due to missing destructors. -- Minor bug fixes and improvements to the Lua, Ruby, Java, C#, Python, Guile, - Chicken, Tcl and Perl modules. - -SWIG-1.3.27 summary: -- Fix bug in anonymous typedef structures which was leading to strange behaviour - -SWIG-1.3.26 summary: -- New language modules: Lua, CLISP and Common Lisp with UFFI. -- Big overhaul to the PHP module. -- Change to the way 'extern' is handled. -- Minor bug fixes specific to C#, Java, Modula3, Ocaml, Allegro CL, - XML, Lisp s-expressions, Tcl, Ruby and Python modules. -- Other minor improvements and bug fixes. - -SWIG-1.3.25 summary: -- Improved runtime type system. Speed of module loading improved in - modules with lots of types. SWIG_RUNTIME_VERSION has been increased - from 1 to 2, but the API is exactly the same; only internal changes - were made. -- The languages that use the runtime type system now support external - access to the runtime type system. -- Various improvements with typemaps and template handling. -- Fewer warnings in generated code. -- Improved colour documentation. -- Many C# module improvements (exception handling, prevention of early - garbage collection, C# attributes support added, more flexible type - marshalling/asymmetric types.) -- Minor improvements and bug fixes specific to the C#, Java, TCL, Guile, - Chicken, MzScheme, Perl, Php, Python, Ruby and Ocaml modules). -- Various other bug fixes and memory leak fixes. - -SWIG-1.3.24 summary: -- Improved enum handling -- More runtime library options -- More bugs fixes for templates and template default arguments, directors - and other areas. -- Better smart pointer support, including data members, static members - and %extend. - -SWIG-1.3.23 summary: -- Improved support for callbacks -- Python docstring support and better error handling -- C++ default argument support for Java and C# added. -- Improved c++ default argument support for the scripting languages plus - option to use original (compact) default arguments. -- %feature and %ignore/%rename bug fixes and mods - they might need default - arguments specified to maintain compatible behaviour when using the new - default arguments wrapping. -- Runtime library changes: Runtime code can now exist in more than one module - and so need not be compiled into just one module -- Further improved support for templates and namespaces -- Overloaded templated function support added -- More powerful default typemaps (mixed default typemaps) -- Some important %extend and director code bug fixes -- Guile now defaults to using SCM API. The old interface can be obtained by - the -gh option. -- Various minor improvements and bug fixes for C#, Chicken, Guile, Java, - MzScheme, Perl, Python and Ruby -- Improved dependencies generation for constructing Makefiles. - -SWIG-1.3.22 summary: -- Improved exception handling and translation of C errors or C++ - exceptions into target language exceptions. -- Improved enum support, mapping to built-in Java 1.5 enums and C# - enums or the typesafe enum pattern for these two languages. -- Python - much better STL suppport and support for std::wstring, - wchar_t and FILE *. -- Initial support for Modula3 and Allegro CL. -- 64 bit TCL support. -- Java and C#'s proxy classes are now nearly 100% generated from - typemaps and/or features for finer control on the generated code. -- SWIG runtime library support deprecation. -- Improved documentation. SWIG now additionally provides documentation - in the form of a single HTML page as well as a pdf document. -- Enhanced C++ friend declaration support. -- Better support for reference counted classes. -- Various %fragment improvements. -- RPM fixes. -- Various minor improvements and bug fixes for C#, Chicken, Guile, Java, - MzScheme, Perl, Php, Python, Ruby and XML. - - -The SWIG-1.3.x development releases offer a huge number of improvements -over older SWIG-1.1 releases. These improvements include: - - - Support for C++ overloaded functions and methods. - - Support for C++ smart pointers. - - Support for C++ namespaces - - Support for C++ overloaded operators. - - Support for C++ templates including member templates. - - Support for C++ template specialization and partial specialization. - - Support for C++ friend declarations. - - Parsing support for almost all C/C++ datatypes. - - Automatic translation of C++ exception specifiers. - - Contract support. - - A full C preprocessor with macro expansion. Includes C99 variadic macros. - - Java, Ruby, MzScheme, PHP4, OCAML, Pike, CHICKEN, XML and C# modules - added. Guile module improved. - - Director support - upcalls for C++ virtual functions into the target - language proxy class. - - Better code generation. SWIG is better able to make optimizations - in order to generate less code. - - Testing framework part of the distribution ("make -k check" support). - - A lot of minor bug fixes and cleanup. - - Better Windows support. - -If you used SWIG-1.1, a number of old features are missing from SWIG-1.3. - - - The SWIG-1.1 documentation system is gone and hasn't been - replaced yet. This is on the long-term to-do list. - - - The Tcl7.x and Perl4 modules are deprecated and no longer - included. - - - A wide variety of old SWIG command-line options and - obscure features are gone. - - - A lot of old %pragma directives and obscure undocumented - customization features have been eliminated. The same - functionality is now available through other means. - - - Objective C support doesn't work right now. No ETA as to - when it will return. - -Although we are making some attempt to preserve backwards -compatibility with interfaces written for SWIG-1.1, SWIG-1.3 -incorporates a number of very substantial modifications to type -handling, typemaps, and wrapper code generation. Therefore, if you -are making extensive use of advanced SWIG features, interfaces written -for SWIG-1.1 may not work. We apologize for the inconvenience, but -these changes are needed in order to fix a number of annoying -"features" in SWIG-1.1. Hopefully the list of new features will -provide enough incentive for you to upgrade (and that the -modifications to your interfaces will only be minor). - -In addition, SWIG-1.3 makes no attempt to be compatible with SWIG-1.1 at -the C++ API level so language modules written for SWIG-1.1 will most -definitely not work with this release. + http://www.dabeaz.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl -See the documentation for details of the SWIG_VERSION preprocessor -symbol if you have backward compatibility issues and need to use more -than one version of SWIG. - -The files NEW and CHANGES describe in some detail all of the important -changes that have been made to the system. Experienced users would be -well advised to read this. +License +======= +Please see the LICENSE file for details of the SWIG license. Release Notes ============= Please see the CHANGES.current file for a detailed list of bug fixes and new features for the current release. The CHANGES file contains bug fixes -and new features for older versions. A summary of the changes is included -in this README file. +and new features for older versions. A summary of changes in each release +can be found in the RELEASENOTES file. + +Backwards Compatibility +======================= +The developers strive their best to preserve backwards compatibility +between releases, but this is not always possible as the overriding +aim is to provide the best wrapping experience. Where backwards +compatibility is known to be broken, it is clearly marked as an +incompatibility in the CHANGES and CHANGES.current files. + +See the documentation for details of the SWIG_VERSION preprocessor +symbol if you have backward compatibility issues and need to use more +than one version of SWIG. Windows Installation ==================== @@ -380,8 +98,9 @@ examples which build the runtime library. Notes: (1) If you checked the code out via SVN, you will have to run ./autogen.sh - before typing 'configure'. In addition, a full build of SWIG requires - the use of bison. + before typing 'configure'. In addition, a full build of SWIG requires + the a number of packages to be installed. Full instructions at + http://www.swig.org/svn.html Macintosh OS X Installation ============================ @@ -389,15 +108,13 @@ SWIG is known to work on various flavors of OS X. Follow the Unix installation instructions above. However, as of this writing, there is still great deal of inconsistency with how shared libaries are handled by various scripting languages on OS X. We've tried to resolve these differences to the extent of our knowledge. -This release was most recently checked with the Panther release of OS X on a -Macintosh G5 system. Your mileage may vary. Users of OS X should be aware that Darwin handles shared libraries and linking in a radically different way than most Unix systems. In order to test SWIG and run the examples, SWIG configures itself to use flat namespaces and to allow undefined -symbols (-flat_namespace -undefined suppress). This mostly closely follows the Unix +symbols (-flat_namespace -undefined suppress). This mostly closely follows the Unix model and makes it more likely that the SWIG examples will work with whatever -installation of software you might have. However, this is generally not the recommended +installation of software you might have. However, this is generally not the recommended technique for building larger extension modules. Instead, you should utilize Darwin's two-level namespaces. Some details about this can be found here @@ -435,7 +152,7 @@ tests may fail on older C++ compilers (for instance if your compiler does not support member templates). These errors are harmless if you don't intend to use these features in your own programs. -Note: The test-suite currently contains around 250 tests. If you +Note: The test-suite currently contains over 500 tests. If you have many different target languages installed and a slow machine, it might take more than an hour to run the test-suite. @@ -490,16 +207,11 @@ Documentation The Doc/Manual directory contains the most recent set of updated documentation for this release. The documentation is available in three different formats, each of which contains identical content. -These format are, pdf (SWIGDocumentation.pdf), single +These format are, pdf (Doc/Manual/SWIGDocumentation.pdf), single page html (Doc/Manual/SWIGDocumentation.html) or multiple page html (other files in Doc/Manual). Please select your chosen format and copy/install to wherever takes your fancy. -This is a development release and the documentation is largely, but -not entirely up to date. We are working on it, but there -was a lot of old documentation and it is taking some time to -update and complete. Please be patient or volunteer to help. - There is some technical developer documentation available in the Doc/Devel subdirectory. This is not necessarily up-to-date, but it has some information on SWIG internals. @@ -511,11 +223,9 @@ have access to a limited variety of hardware (Linux, Solaris, OS-X, and Windows). All contributions help. If you would like to join the SWIG development team or contribute a -language module to the distribution, please contact the swig-dev +language module to the distribution, please contact the swig-devel mailing list, details at http://www.swig.org/mail.html. -- The SWIG Maintainers - - |