SWIG (Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator) Version 1.3 Alpha 5 =================== 9/19/00 : beazley [Python] Python module generates more efficient code for creating the return value of a wrapper function. Modification suggested by Jon Travis. 9/19/00 : beazley Library files specified with the -l option are now included at the end of the interface file (reverting to the old behavior). 9/19/00 : beazley Fixed some problems with enum handling. enums are now manipulated as 'int', but cast into the enum type when values are passed to the corresponding C function. 9/19/00 : mkoeppe [Guile] Removed "-with-smobs" command-line option, as this is the default now. Added "-emit-setters" command-line option, which turns on generating procedures-with-setters; see internals.html. 9/18/00 : mkoeppe Incorporated patch #101430, fixing bugs in the Guile module: 1. Some arguments were erroneously taken as *optional* arguments when ignored arguments were present. 2. Guile 1.3.4 was not supported since functions introduced in Guile 1.4 were used. 3. Added handling of `const char *'. 9/17/00 : beazley Fixed problem with failed assertion and large files. 9/17/00 : beazley Fixed problem with the '%' character appearing in added methods and function bodies. Preprocessor bug. Version 1.3 Alpha 4 (September 4, 2000) ====================================== 9/3/00 : ttn Added instructions for maintainers in Examples/README on how to make examples also be useful in the testing framework. Also, "make check" now uses ./Lib by via env var `SWIG_LIB'. This is overridable like so: make chk-swiglib=/my/experimental/swig/Lib check 9/3/00 : beazley Added $typemap variable to typemaps. This gets replaced with a string indicating the typemap that is applied. Feature request from rsalz. 9/3/00 : beazley Experimental optimization to code generation for virtual member functions. If you have two classes like this: class A() { virtual void foo(); } class B() : public A { virtual void foo(); } Swig now will generate a single wrapper function for this A_foo(A *a) { a->foo(); } and use it as the implementation of both A_foo() and B_foo(). This optimization only takes place if both methods are declared as virtual and both take identical parameters. *** EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE *** 9/3/00 : beazley Restored the "memberin" typemap for setting structure members. Unlike the old version, the new version is expanded inline in the wrapper function allowing access to scripting language internals (a sometimes requested feature). The "memberout" typemap is gone. Use the "out" typemaps instead. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 9/3/00 : beazley Attribute set methods no longer return the value of a member. For example: struct Foo { int x; ... } now gets set as follows: void Foo_x_set(Foo *f, int x) { f->x = x; } In SWIG1.1 it used to be this: int Foo_x_set(Foo *f, int x) { return (f->x = x); } This has been changed due to the complexity created by trying to do this with more exotic datatypes such as arrays. It also complicates inlining and handling of the "memberin" typemap. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 9/2/00 : beazley Removed the ptrcast() and ptrmap() functions from the pointer.i library file. Old implementation is incompatible with new type system. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 9/2/00 : beazley New runtime function SWIG_TypeQuery(const char *name) added. This function can be used to extract the type info structure that is used for type-checking. It works with either the nice C name or mangled version of a datatype. For example: swig_type_info *ty = Swig_TypeQuery("int *"); swig_type_info *ty = Swig_TypeQuery("_p_int"); This is an advanced feature that has been added to support some exotic extension modules that need to directly manipulate scripting language objects. *** NEW FEATURE *** 9/2/00 : beazley New directive %types() added. This is used to explicitly list datatypes that should be included in the runtime type-checking code. Normally it is never necessary to use this but sometimes advanced extensions (such as the pointer.i library) may need to manually add types to the type-checker. *** NEW FEATURE *** 8/31/00 : beazley Improved handling of string array variables. For example, a global variable of the form "char name[64]" is automatically managed as a 64 character string. Previously this didn't work at all or required the use of a special typemap. *** NEW FEATURE (Tcl, Perl, Python) *** 8/31/00 : ttn Added Makefile target `check-c++-examples', which uses new files under Examples/C++ contributed by Tal Shalif. Now "make check" also does "make check-c++-examples". Also, expanded actions in `check-gifplot-example' and `check-aliveness'. 8/30/00 : mkoeppe Major clean-up in the Guile module. Added typemap-driven documentation system. Changed to handle more than 10 args. Updated and extended examples. *** NEW FEATURE *** 8/29/00 : beazley Added new %insert directive that inserts the contents of a file into a portion of the output wrapper file. This is only intended for use by writers of language modules. Works as follows: %insert(headers) "file.swg"; %insert(runtime) "file.swg"; %insert(wrappers) "file.swg"; %insert(init) "file.swg"; *** NEW FEATURE *** 8/29/00 : beazley Added new %runtime directive which includes code into the runtime portion of the wrapper code. For example: %runtime %{ ... some internal runtime code ... %} There is no practical reason for ordinary users to use this feature (almost everything can be done using %{ ... %} instead). However, writers of language modules may want to use this in language configuration files. *** NEW FEATURE *** 8/28/00 : beazley Typemaps can now be specified using string literals like this: %typemap(in) int "$target = SvIV($source);"; When code is specified like this, it is *NOT* enclosed inside a local scope (as with older typemap declarations). Note: character escape sequences are interpreted in the code string so if you want to include a quote or some other special character, make sure you use a (\). *** NEW FEATURE *** 8/27/00 : beazley Typemaps have been modified to follow typedef declarations. For example, if you have this: typedef int Number; %typemap(in) int { ... get an integer ... } void foo(Number a); The typemap for 'int' will be applied to the argument 'Number a'. Of course, if you specify a typemap for 'Number' it will take precedence (nor will it ever be applied to an 'int'). *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 8/27/00 : beazley Default typemap specification has changed. In older versions of swig, you could do this: %typemap(in) int SWIG_DEFAULT_TYPE { ... } To specify the default handling of a datatype. Now that SWIG follows typedef declarations, this is unnecessary. Simply specifying a typemap for 'int' will work for all variations of integers that are typedef'd to 'int'. Caveat, specifying the default behavior for pointers, references, arrays, and user defined types is a little different. This must be done as follows: %typemap() SWIGPOINTER * { ... a pointer ... } %typemap() SWIGREFERENCE & { ... a reference ... } %typemap() SWIGARRAY [] { ... an array ... } %typemap() SWIGTYPE { ... a user-defined type (by value) ... } *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 8/15/00 : dustin The file swig-1.3a1-1.spec has been added to the Tools directory. It can be used to build a redhat package for SWIG, although it will need to be updated for the next public release. 8/15/00 : beazley Typemaps have been completely rewritten. Eventually they may be replaced with something better, but for now they stay. However, there are a number of a significant changes that may trip some people up: 1. Typemap scoping is currently broken. Because of this, the following code won't work. %typemap(in) blah * { ... } class Foo { ... int bar(blah *x); } %typemap(in) blah *; /* Clear typemap */ (this breaks because the code for the class Foo is actually generated after the entire interface file has been processed). This is only a temporary bug. 2. In SWIG1.1, the %apply directive worked by performing a very complex type-aliasing procedure. From this point on, %apply is simply a generalized typemap copy operation. For example, %apply double *OUTPUT { double *x, double *y }; Copies *ALL* currently defined typemaps for 'double *OUTPUT' and copies them to 'double *x' and 'double *y'. Most people probably won't even notice this change in %apply. However, where it will break things is in code like this: %apply double *OUTPUT { double *x }; %typemap(in) double *OUTPUT { ... whatever ... } void foo(double *x); In SWIG1.1, you will find that 'foo' uses the 'double *OUTPUT' rule even though it was defined after the %apply directive (this is the weird aliasing scheme at work). In SWIG1.3 and later, the 'double *OUTPUT' rule is ignored because it is defined after the %apply directive. 3. The %clear directive has been modified to erase all currently defined typemaps for a particular type. This differs from SWIG1.1 where %clear only removed rules that were added using the %apply directive. 4. Typemap matching is now performed using *exact* types. This means that things like this %typemap(in) char * { } %typemap(in) const char * { } are different typemaps. A similar rule applies for pointers, arrays, and references. For example: %typemap(in) double * { } used to apply to 'double &', 'double []', Now, it only applies to 'double *'. If you want a 'double &', you'll need to handle that separately. 5. Array matching has been simplfied. In SWIG1.1, array matching was performed by trying various combinations of dimensions. For example, 'double a[10][20]' was matched as follows: double [10][20] double [ANY][20] double [10][ANY] double [ANY][ANY] In SWIG1.3, only the following matches are attempted: double [10][20] double [ANY][ANY] On the positive side, typemap matching is now *significantly* faster than before. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 8/15/00 : beazley Secret developer feature. Since datatypes are now represented as strings internally, you can bypass limitations of the parser and create a wild datatype by simply enclosing the raw string encoding in backticks (``) and sticking it in the interface file anywhere a type is expected. For example, `a(20).a(10).p.f(int,int)`. This feature is only intended for testing (i.e., you want to see what happens to your language module if it gets a reference to a pointer to an array of pointers to functions or something). *** SICK HACK *** 8/14/00 : beazley Completely new type-system added to the implementation. More details later. 8/11/00 : beazley Cleaned up some of the I/O handling. SWIG no longer generates any temporary files such as _wrap.wrap, _wrap.ii, _wrap.init. Instead, these "files" are kept around in memory as strings (although this is transparent to language modules). 8/4/00 : ttn Added Makefile target "check" and variants. This can be used like "make check" or, to explicitly skip a language LANG: "make skip-LANG=true check". LANG is skipped automatically if ./configure determines that LANG support is insufficient. Currently, the check is limited to doing the equivalent of "make all" in some of the Examples directories. This should be expanded both horizontally (different types of tests) and vertically (after "make all" in an Examples subdir succeeds, do some additional tests with the resulting interpreter, etc). 8/4/00 : ttn Added Makefile target "distclean", which deletes all the files ./configure creates, including config.status and friends. 8/3/00 : harcoh java changes??? [todo: document changes] 7/23/00 : beazley Typemaps have been modified to key off of the real datatypes used in the interface file. This means that typemaps for "const char *" and "char *" will be difference as will typemaps for "Vector" and "Vector *." *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** This is likely to break interfaces that rely on the odd type handling behavior of typemaps in SWIG1.1--especially with respect to interfaces involving pass-by-value. 7/23/00 : beazley New %constant directive. This directive can be used to create true constants in the target scripting language. It's most simple form is something like this: %constant FOO 42; In this case, the type is inferred from the syntax of the value (in reality, all #define macros are translated into directives of this form). An expanded version is as follows: %constant(Foo *) FOO = &FooObj; In this case, an explicit type can be specified. This latter form may be useful for creating constants that used to be specified as const Foo *FOO = &FooObj; (which are now treated as variables). *** EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE *** The syntax may change in the final release. 7/23/00 : beazley Modified the parser so that variable declarations of the form "const type *a" are handled as variables, not constants. Note: SWIG1.1 handled this case erroneously because const char *a is a pointer variable that can be reassigned. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** Note: just because this is the "right" way to do things, doesn't mean it's the most appropriate interpretation. I suspect that many C programmers might use 'const char *' with the intent of creating a constant, without realizing that they've created a reassignable global variable. 7/23/00 : beazley The C/C++ wrapping layer has been completely redesigned and reimplemented. This change should iron out a few rough spots with the handling of datatypes. In addition, the wrapper code is somewhat cleaner. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** This change may break interfaces that involve subtle corner-cases with typemaps and the %addmethods directive since some of these features had somewhat type handling behavior in SWIG1.1. 7/23/00 : beazley The "memberin" and "memberout" typemaps are gone for the moment, but they might return as soon as I figure out how to integrate them with some of the streamlined C wrapper functions. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/22/00 : beazley A variety of old type handling functions such as print_type(), print_full(), print_mangle(), etc... are gone and have been replaced with a smaller set of functions. See the file Doc/internals.html for details. This will break all third party language modules. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/20/00 : beazley Deprecated the %val and %out directives. These directives shouldn't really be necessary since typemaps can be used to achieve similar results. This also cleans up the handling of types and parameters quite a bit. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/20/00 : ttn Fixed unspecified-module bug in Guile support and removed more non-"with-smobs" functionality using patches submitted by Matthias Koeppe. Re-enable recognition of "-with-smobs" (with no effect since we use smobs by default now) for the time being. After the 1.3a4 release, this option will signal an error. 7/17/00 : ttn Fixed NULL-input bug in parameter list handling. Reported by Matthias Koeppe. 7/12/00 : beazley Fixed memory leak in Python type-checking code. Reported by Keith Davidson. Bug #109379. 7/10/00 : beazley Changed internal data structures related to function parameters. 7/10/00 : beazley Fixed some bugs related to the handling of the %name() directive and classes in the Tcl module. Problem reported by James Bailey. 7/10/00 : beazley Fixed parsing and enum handling problems with character constants. Reported by Greg Kochanski. 7/10/00 : beazley Removed WrapperFunction class from the core and updated the language module. This will break third party modules. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/9/00 : beazley Implementation of SWIG no longer makes use of C++ operator overloading. This will almost certainly break *all* third party language modules that are not part of the main SWIG CVS tree. Sorry. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/8/00 : beazley Removed the experimental and undocumented "build" typemap that was intended to work with multiple arguments. Simply too weird to keep around. Besides, a better replacement is in the works. 7/6/00 : ttn Removed non-"with-smobs" functionality (Guile support), i.e., "-with-smobs" is now the default and no longer needs to be specified on the command-line. 7/5/00 : ttn Incorporated Ruby support contributed by Masaki Fukushima. 6/28/00 : ttn Applied more-than-10-args bugfix patch contributed by Matthias Koeppe. 6/27/00 : beazley Rewrote some of the string handling and eliminated the C++ implementation (which is now just a wrapper). 6/27/00 : ttn Added Doc/index.html and Doc/internals.html. The target audience for the latter is new SWIG developers. Version 1.3 Alpha 3 (June 18, 2000) =================================== 6/18/00 : beazley Removed the naming.cxx, hash.cxx, and symbol.cxx files from the SWIG1.1 directory. Continued to migrate things away from the C++ base (although there's still a lot of work to do). 6/17/00 : beazley Added a few more examples to the Examples directory. Still need to do a lot of work on this. 6/16/00 : beazley Added -includeall to follow all #include statements in the preprocessor. 6/15/00 : beazley Tried to fix as many C++ warnings as possible when compiling with the Sun Workshop C++ compiler. Unfortunately, this means that there are a lot of statements that contain string literals of the form (char*)"Blah". 6/15/00: beazley A variety of cleanup and performance optimization in the low-level DOH library. This seems to result in a speedup of 50-100% for preprocessing and other related tasks. 5/10/00 : ttn Applied variable-wrapping bugfix patch contributed by Matthias Koeppe. 4/17/00 : ttn Updated MzScheme support contributed by Oleg Tolmatcev. We now use a `Scheme_Type'-based structure to wrap pointers. 4/11/00 : ttn Incorporated further Guile-support patch by Matthias Koeppe. Typemaps previously deleted have been re-added. There is now exception handling (see Doc/engineering.html). `SWIG_init' is now declared extern only for simple linkage. Some bugs were fixed. 4/06/00 : ttn Incorporated MzScheme support contributed by Oleg Tolmatcev. This includes new directories Lib/mzscheme and Examples/mzscheme. 4/03/00 : ttn Added Examples/guile and children. This is an adaptation of the same-named directory from the SWIG-1.1p5 distribution. Added Guile-specific section to Doc/engineering.html. 4/02/00 : ttn Incorporated new guilemain.i by Martin Froehlich. Incorporated Guile-support rewrite patch by Matthias Koeppe. The command line option "-with-smobs" enables implementation of pointer type handling using smobs, the canonical mechanism for defining new types in Guile. Previous implementation (using strings) is at the moment still supported but deprecated. At some point, "-with-smobs" will be the default and no longer required. 3/13/00 : beazley Added purify patches submitted by Ram Bhamidipaty. 3/02/00 : ttn Added support for different Guile "linkage" schemes. Currently, "-Linkage hobbit" works. Version 1.3 Alpha 2 (March 1, 2000) =================================== 2/29/00 : beazley Made SWIG ignore the 'mutable' keyword. 2/29/00 : beazley Incorporated some patches to the Perl5 module related to the -hide option and the destruction of objects. Patch submitted by Karl Forner. 2/27/00 : ttn Incorporated Guile support contributed by Matthias Koeppe. This includes a cpp macro in Lib/guile/guile.swg and the entire file Lib/guile/typemaps.i. 2/25/00 : ttn Modified configure.in and Makefile.in files to support non-local build (useful in multi-arch environments). 2/24/00 : ttn Incorporated Guile support contributed by Clark McGrew. This works with Guile 1.3, but since it depends heavily on the gh_ interface, it should work for all later versions. It has not been tested with versions before 1.3. WARNING: Code is unstable due to experimentation by ttn. 2/16/00 : beazley A variety of performance improvements to the Python shadow class code generation. Many of these result in substantial runtime performance gains. However, these have come at a cost of requiring the use of Python 1.5.2. For older versions, use 'swig -noopt -python' to turn off these optimization features. Version 1.3 Alpha 1 (February 11, 2000) ======================================= 2/11/00 : Added 'void' to prototype of Python module initializer. Reported by Mark Howson (1/20/00). 2/11/00 : beazley Modified the Python shadow class code to discard ownership of an object whenever it is assigned to a member of another object. This problem has been around for awhile, but was most recently reported by Burkhard Kloss (12/30/99). 2/11/00 : beazley Added braces around macros in the exception.i library. Reported by Buck Hodges (12/19/99) 2/11/00 : beazley Fixed bug in the constraints.i library. Reported by Buck Hodges (12/14/99) 2/11/00 : beazley The %native directive now generates Tcl8 object-style command calls. A full solution for Tcl7 and Tcl8 is still needed. Patch suggested by Mike Weiblen (11/29/99) 2/11/00 : beazley Modified the typemap code to include the $ndim variable for arrays. Patch provided by Michel Sanner (11/12/99). 2/11/00 : beazley Modified the Python module to raise a Runtime error if an attempt is made to set a read-only member of a shadow class. Reported by Michel Sanner (11/5/99). 2/10/00 : The documentation system has been removed. However, it is likely to return at some point in the future. 2/1/00 : Added a number of performance enhancements to the Python shadow classing and type-checking code. Contributed by Vadim Chugunov. 1. Remove _kwargs argument from the shadow wrappers when -keyword option is not specified. This saves us a construction of keyword dictionary on each method call. def method1(self, *_args, **_kwargs): val = apply(test2c.PyClass1_method1, (self,) + _args, _kwargs) return val becomes def method1(self, *_args): val = apply(test2c.PyClass1_method1, (self,) + _args) return val 2. Incorporate self into the _args tuple. This saves at least one tuple allocation per method call. def method1(self, *_args): val = apply(test2c.PyClass1_method1, (self,) + _args) return val becomes def method1(*_args): val = apply(test2c.PyClass1_method1, _args) return val 3. Remove *Ptr classes. Assume that we are SWIGging a c++ class CppClass. Currently SWIG will generate both CppClassPtr class that hosts all methods and also CppClass that is derived from the former and contains just the constructor. When CppClass method is called, the interpreter will try to find it in the CppClass's dictionary first, and only then check the base class. CppClassPtr functionality may be emulated with: import new _new_instance = new.instance def CppClassPtr(this): return _new_instance(CppClass, {"this":this,"thisown":0}) This saves us one dictionary lookup per call. The new module was first added in Python-1.5.2 so it won't work with older versions. I've implemented an alternative that achieves the same thing 4. Use CObjects instead of strings for pointers. Dave: This enhancements result in speedups of up to 50% in some of the preliminary tests I ran. 2/1/00 : Upgraded the Python module to use a new type-checking scheme that is more memory efficient, provides better performance, and is less error prone. Unfortunately, it will break all code that depends on the SWIG_GetPtr() function call in typemaps. These functions should be changed as follows: if (SWIG_GetPtr(string,&ptr,"_Foo_p")) { return NULL; } becomes if (SWIG_ConvertPtr(pyobj, &ptr, SWIG_TYPE_Foo_p) == -1) { return NULL; } Note: In the new implementation SWIG_TYPE_Foo_p is no longer a type-signature string, but rather an index into a type encoding table that contains type information. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/30/00 : loic Conditionaly compile experimental code with --enable-experiment configure flag. Fix .cvsignore to ignore configrue & yacc generated files 1/28/00 : loic Apply automake everywhere Keep configure scripts so that people are not *forced* to autoconf Keep sources generated by yacc so that compilation without yacc is possible. Source/LParse/cscanner.c: change lyacc.h into parser.h to please default yacc generation rules. Use AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS in configure.in instead of hand made script. Update all relevant .cvsignore to include .deps Fixed missing ; line 136 Source/Swig/swig.h 1/13/00 : beazley Fixed a number of minor end-of-file parsing problems in the preprocessor. 1/13/00 : beazley Added -freeze option that forces SWIG to freeze upon exit. This is only used as a debugging tool so that I can more easily examine SWIG's memory footprint. 1/13/00 : beazley Added patch to guile module for supporting optional arguments Patch contributed by Dieter Baron. 1/13/00 : loic Added .cvsignore, Examples/.cvsignore, Source/DOH/Doh/.cvsignore Source/SWIG1.1/main.cxx: Fixed -I handling bug Source/Modules1.1/java.cxx: fixed char* -> const char* warnings that are errors when compiling with gcc-2.95.2 Source/SWIG1.1/main.cxx: cast const char* to char* for String_replace token and rep should really be const. 1/12/00 : beazley Added Harco's Java modules. 1/12/00 : beazley Revoked the %ifdef, %ifndef, %endif, %if, %elif, and %else directives. These are no longer needed as SWIG now has a real preprocessor. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/12/00 : beazley Moved the documentation modules from the SWIG directory to the Modules directory (where they really should have been to begin with). 1/12/00 : beazley Removed the -stat option for printing statistics. The statistics reporting was inadequate and mostly broken anyway. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/12/00 : beazley Removed the -t option for reading a typemap file. More trouble than it's worth. Just include typemaps at the top of the interface file. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/12/00 : beazley Removed the %checkout directive. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/12/00 : beazley Removed the -ci option for file checkin. Too problematic to implement. Probably better to just put your SWIG library under CVS instead. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***. 1/11/00 : beazley Deleted the LATEX module. Sorry... Didn't know anyone who was using it. Besides, I'm looking to simplify the documentation system. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 1/11/00 : beazley Modified the ASCII documentation module to use a .txt suffix for its output file instead of .doc. 1/11/00 : beazley Added the long-lost SWIG preprocessor back to the system. It should be enabled by default. Raw preprocessed output can be viewed using swig -E file.i. *** NEW FEATURE *** 1/11/00 : beazley and djmitche Completely reorganized the SWIG directory structure. The basic organization is now: Source/ SWIG source code Lib/ SWIG library files (swig_lib) Doc/ Documentation Examples/ Examples More directories will be added as needed. 12/08/99: Loic Dachary (loic@senga.org) Enhanced package handling for perl5 and c++. With new option -hide Foo::Bar, every perl5 object (Frob) is qualified by Foo::Bar::Frob. The package name is solely used to encapsulate C/C++ wrappers output in _wrap.c and the corresponding perl package in .pm. Note that a package name may contain :: (Frob::Nitz) and will be relative to the package name provided by -hide (Foo::Bar::Frob::Nitz). In *_wrap.c, SWIG_init macro is used. Was previously defined but not used and simplifies code. Added typemap(perl5,perl5in) and typemap(perl5,perl5out) that do the equivalent of typemap(perl5,in) and typemap(perl5,out) but contain perl code and applies to wrappers generated by -shadow. Lacking proper regression tests I used Examples/perl5/{c++,constraint,defarg,except, graph/graph[1234],multinherit,nested,shadow,simple,tree, typemaps/{argv,argv2,arraymember,database,file,ignore,integer, output,passref,reference,return}}/. I ran swig with and without the patches, diff the generatedsources, run the .pl files and checked that the results are identical. In all those examples I had no error. 11/21/99: Modified the Tcl module to provide full variable linking capabilities to all datatypes. In previous versions, a pair of accessor functions were created for datatypes incompatible with the Tcl_LinkVar() function. Now, we simply use variable traces to support everything. This may break scripts that rely upon the older behavior. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 11/21/99: Added slight tweak to wrapper generator to collect local variables of similar type. Produces somewhat more compact wrapper code. 11/20/99: Modified the Tcl module to use SWIG_GetArgs() to parse arguments. This is a technique borrowed from Python in which arguments are converted using a format string convention similiar to fprintf(). This results in a *substantial* reduction in the size of the resulting wrapper code with only a modest runtime overhead in going through the extra conversion function. 11/13/99: Completely rewrote the class/structure generation code for the Tcl module. Now, a small set of runtime functions are used to implement the functionality for all classes (instead of a massive amount of runtime code being generated for each class). Class specific information is simply encoded in a series of static tables. This results in a *HUGE* reduction in wrapper code size--especially for C++. 11/13/99: Removed the -tcl (Tcl 7.x) module. Tcl 8.0 is now several years old and the defacto standard--no real reason to keep supporting the old version at this point. 11/13/99: Cleaned up -c option for Python module. The pyexp.swg file is now gone. 11/13/99: Fixed external declarations to work better with static linking on Windows. Static linking should now be possible by defining the -DSTATIC_LINK option on the command line. Patch contributed by Alberto Fonseca. 11/5/99 : Fixed an obscure code generation bug related to the generation of default constructors. Bug reported by Brad Clements. 11/5/99 : Fixed a few memory problems found by purify. 11/5/99 : Officially deprecated the -htcl, -htk, and -plugin options from the Tcl and Tcl8 modules. 10/26/99: Removed unused variable from python/typemaps.i. Patch contributed by Keith Davidson. 8/16/99 : Added _WIN32 symbol to libraries to better support Windows. 8/16/99 : Deprecated the Perl4 module. It is no longer included in the distribution and no longer supported. In the entire 3 years SWIG has been around I never received a single comment about it so I'm assuming no one will miss it... 8/16/99 : Modified the type-checking code to register type mappings using a table instead of repeated calls to SWIG_RegisterMapping(). This reduces the size of the module initialization function somewhat. 8/15/99 : Cleaned up the pointer type-checking code in the Tcl module. 8/15/99 : Many changes to the libraries to support runtime libraries. 8/13/99 : Eliminated C++ compiler warning messages about extern "C" linkage. 8/13/99 : Some cleanup of Python .swg files to better support runtime libraries on Windows. 8/13/99 : Modified the %pragma directive to attach pragmas declared inside a class definition to the class itself. For example: class foo { ... %pragma(python) addtomethod = "insert:print `hello world'" ... } Most people don't need to worry about how this works. For people writing backend modules, class-based pragmas work like this: lang->cpp_open_class() // Open a class lang->cpp_pragma() // Supply pragmas ... // Emit members lang->cpp_close_class() // Close the class All of the pragmas are passed first since they might be used to affect the code generation of other members. Please see the Python module for an example. Patches contributed by Robin Dunn. 8/13/99 : Patch to Python shadow classes to eliminate ignored exception errors in destructors. Patch contributed by Robin Dunn. 8/11/99 : Minor patch to swig_lib/python/swigptr.swg (added SWIGSTATIC declaration). Patch contributed by Lyle Johnson. 8/11/99 : Added FIRSTKEY/NEXTKEY methods to Perl5 shadow classes Patch contributed by Dennis Marsa. 8/11/99 : Modified Python module so that NULL pointers are returned and passed as 'None.' Patch contributed by Tal Shalif. 8/10/99 : Fixed missing 'int' specifiers in various places. 8/10/99 : Added Windows makefile for Runtime libraries. Contributed by Bob Techentin. 8/10/99 : Fixed minor problem in Python runtime makefile introduced by keyword arguments. 8/8/99 : Changed $target of perl5(out) typemap from ST(0) to ST(argvi). Patch contributed by Geoffrey Hort. 8/8/99 : Fixed bug in typemap checking related to the ANY keyword in arrays and ignored arguments. Error reported by Geoffrey Hort. 8/8/99 : %enabledoc and %disabledoc directives can now be used inside class/structure definitions. However, no check is made to see if they are balanced (i.e., a %disabledoc directive inside a class does not have to have a matching %enabledoc in the same class). 8/8/99 : Keyword argument handling is now supported in the Python module. For example: int foo(char *bar, int spam, double x); Can be called from Python as foo(x = 3.4, bar="hello", spam=42) To enable this feature, run SWIG with the '-keyword' command line option. Mixing keyword and default arguments should work as well. Unnamed arguments are assigned names such as "arg1", "arg2", etc... *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** Functions with duplicate argument names such as bar(int *OUTPUT, int *OUTPUT) will likely cause problematic wrapper code to be generated. To fix this, use different names or use %apply to map typemaps to alternate names. 8/8/99 : Handling of the 'this' pointer has been changed in Python shadow classes. Previously, dereferencing of '.this' occured in the Python shadow class itself. Now, this step occurs in the C wrappers using the following function: SWIG_GetPtrObj(PyObject *, void **ptr, char *type) This function can accept either a string containing a pointer or a shadow class instance with a '.this' attribute of appropriate type. This change allows the following: 1. The real shadow class instance for an object is passed to the C wrappers where it can be examined/modified by typemaps. 2. Handling of default/keyword arguments is now greatly simplified. 3. The Python wrapper code is much more simple. Plus, it eliminated more than 300 lines of C++ code in the Python module. *** CAVEAT : This requires the abstract object interface. It should work with Python 1.4, but probably nothing older than that. 8/8/99 : Fixed handling of "const" and pointers in classes. In particular, declarations such as class foo { ... const char *msg; const int *iptr; } are handled as assignable variables as opposed to constant values (this is the correct behavior in C/C++). Note: declarations such as "char *const msg" are still unsupported. Constants declared at the global level using const are also broken (because I have a number of interfaces that rely upon this behavior). *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** This may break interfaces that mistakenly treat 'const char *' types as constant values. 8/8/99 : Modified the parser to support bit-fields. For example: typedef struct { unsigned int is_keyword : 1; unsigned int is_extern : 1; unsigned int is_static : 1; } flags; Bit-fields can only be applied to integer types and their are other restrictions. SWIG performs no such type-checking (although the C compiler will catch problems when it tries to compile the wrapper code). 8/8/99 : Removed trailing space of $basetype substitution in typemaps. This is to allow things like this: %typemap(python, argout) spam** OUTPUT{ ... char* a = "$basetype_p"; ... } (Patch suggested by Nathan Dunfield). 6/22/99 : Made a very slight tweak to the Perl5 shadow class code that allows typemaps to alter the return type of objects (to support polymorphic types). Patch contributed by Drake Diedrich. 4/8/99 : Fixed null pointer handling bug in Perl module. Patch contributed by Junio Hamano. 3/17/99 : Fixed bug in perl5ptr.swg for ActiveState Perl. Patch contributed by Greg Anderson. 2/27/99 : Eliminated segmentation fault when Swig runs on empty files. 2/27/99 : Added patch to Guile module to eliminate unused variables. Contributed by Mike Simons. 2/27/99 : Fixed problem with %addmethods returning references. 2/27/99 : Fixed Runtime/Makefile. Patch contributed by Mike Romberg. 2/27/99 : Incorporated patches to the type-checker. 2/27/99 : Fixed problem with -exportall switch and shadow classes in Perl5 module. Patch contributed by Dennis Marsa. 2/27/99 : Modified Perl5 module to recognize 'undef' as a NULL char *. Patch contributed by Junio Hamano. 2/27/99 : Fixed the Perl5 module to support the newer versions of ActiveState Perl for Win32. 2/27/99 : Fixed the include order of files specified with the -I option. 2/5/98- : Dave finishes his dissertation, goes job hunting, moves to 2/5/99 Chicago and generally thrashes about. Version 1.1 Patch 5 (February 5, 1998) ====================================== 2/4/98 : Fixed a bug in the configure script when different package locations are specified (--with-tclincl, etc...). 2/2/98 : Fixed name-clash bug related to the switch to C macros for accessor functions. The new scheme did not work correctly for objects with members such as 'obj', 'val', etc... Fixed the bug by appending the word 'swig' to macro argument names. Patch contributed by Rudy Albachten. 2/2/98 : Slight fix to the Perl5 module to eliminate warning messages about 'varname used only once : possible typo'. Fix contributed by Rudy Albachten. 1/9/98 : Fixed a bug in the Perl 5 module related to the creation of constants and shadow classes. 1/9/98 : Fixed linking bug with Python 1.5 embed.i library file. Version 1.1 Patch 4 (January 4, 1998) ===================================== 1/4/98 : Changed structured of the Examples directory to be more friendly to Borland C++. 1/4/98 : Added the function Makefile.win.bc for compiling the examples under Borland 5.2. 1/4/98 : Slight change to the perl5 module and C++ compilation. The library is now included before any Perl headers because Perl the extern "C" linkage of math.h screws alot of things up (especially on Windows). 1/2/98 : Change to the Python module that reduces the number of constants created by C++ classes, inheritance, and shadow classes. This modification may introduce a few slight incompatibilities if you attempt to use the non-shadow class interface with shadow classes enabled. Patch contributed by Mike Romberg. 1/2/98 : Support for Tcl 8.0 namespaces has been added. This *replaces* the original SWIG mechanism that assumed [incr Tcl] namespaces. To use namespaces, simply run SWIG with the following options swig -tcl -namespace foo.i This places everything in a namespace that matches the module name swig -tcl -namespace -prefix bar foo.i This places everything in the namespace 'bar' The use of namespaces is new in Tcl 8.0. However, the wrapper code generated by SWIG will still work with all versions of Tcl newer than and including Tcl 7.3/Tk3.6 even if the -namespace option is used. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** This change may break existing applications that relied on the -prefix and -namespace options. 1/2/98 : Added the following constants to the Tcl wrapper code SWIG_name - Name of the SWIG module SWIG_prefix - Prefix/namespace appended to command names SWIG_namespace - Name of the namespace SWIG library writers can use these to their advantages. 1/2/98 : Fixed a bug in the Tcl8 module related to the creation of pointer constants (the function SWIG_MakePtr was missing from the wrapper code). 1/2/98 : Added the consthash.i library file to the Tcl and Tcl8 modules. 1/1/98 : Changed and cleaned up the Python typemaps.i file. The following significant changes were made : 1. The OUTPUT typemap now returns Python tuples instead of lists. Lists can be returned as before by using the L_OUTPUT type. If compatibility with older versions is needed, run SWIG with the -DOUTPUT_LIST option. 2. The BOTH typemap has been renamed to INOUT. For backwards compatibility, the "BOTH" method still exists however. 3. Output typemaps now generate less code than before. Changes to typemaps.i may break existing Python scripts that assume output in the form of a list. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 12/31/97: Fixed long overdue problems with the testing scripts and certain makefiles that required the use of the bash shell. Everything should work properly with the standard Bourne shell (sh) now. 12/31/97: Modified typemaps to allow $basetype as a valid local variable. This allows for all sorts of bizarre hackish typemaps that do cool things. Patch contributed by Dominique Dumont. 12/31/97: Switched accessor functions generated for member data to C preprocessor macros (except in cases involving typemaps or char *). 12/31/97: Fixed a bug related to C++ member data involving references. 12/31/97: Changed accessor functions for C++ member functions to preprocessor macros. This cleans up the wrapper code and results in fewer function definitions. 12/31/97: Changed the default C constructor to use calloc() instead of malloc() 12/30/97: Changed the creation of constants in the Perl5 module. For all practical purposes, they should work in exactly the same way as before except that they now require much less wrapper code. Modules containing large numbers of constants may see greater than a 50% reduction in wrapper code size. 12/30/97: Modified the Python module to be more intelligent about the creation of constants. SWIG no longer generates redundant global variables and the size of the module initialization function should be reduced. (Many thanks to Jim Fulton). 12/29/97: Fixed a bug in C++ code generation related to member functions, default arguments, and references. 12/29/97: Fixed configure script and a few makefiles to support Python 1.5 12/29/97: Added 'embed15.i' library file. This file should be used to staticly link versions of Python 1.5. To make it the default, simply copy 'swig_lib/python/embed15.i' to 'swig_lib/python/embed.i' Version 1.1 Patch 3 (November 24, 1997) ======================================== 11/23/97: Fixed a bug in the Perl5 module with shadow classes and static class functions that return class instances. Note : The fix for this bug requires a slight restructuring of of the .pm files created by SWIG. 11/23/97: Fixed a bug in the Tcl/Tcl8 modules related to variable linking of character arrays. If you declared a global variable 'char foo[10]', the generated wrapper code would either cause a segmentation fault immediately upon loading or weird memory corruption elsewhere. This should now be fixed although character arrays can only be read-only. 11/23/97: Fixed a bug with the %import directive that caused it to fail if files were imported from directories other than the current working directory. 11/23/97: Fixed incorrect diagnostic message in the ASCII documentation module. 11/23/97: Changed the behavior of the -o option when used with shadow classes. If -o was used to specify both the pathname and filename of SWIG's output such as swig -o /home/swig/wrapper.c -shadow -perl5 foo.i The wrapper code would be placed the file specified with -o, but the .pm file and documentation would be placed in the directory where SWIG was run. Now, these files are placed in the same directory as the file specified with the -o option. This change is also needed for proper operation on the Macintosh. 11/23/97: Added a 'this()' method to Perl5 shadow classes. This can be used to return the normal pointer value from a shadow class that is represented as a tied hash. To use just invoke as a method like this : $l = new List; # Create an object $ptr = $l->this(); # Get the normal pointer value *** NEW FEATURE *** 11/23/97: Fixed the Tcl 8 pointer.i library file (which was completely broken in 1.1p2). 11/23/97: Modified the Perl5 type-checker to fix a few problems with global variables of pointer types and to allow tied hashes to be used interchangably with normal pointer values. 11/23/97: Modified the typemap mechanism to allow output typemaps of type 'void'. These were ignored previously, but now if you specify, %typemap(lang,out) void { ... return a void ... } You can change or assign a return value to the function. 11/23/97: Fixed processing of 'bool' datatypes in the Python module. 11/23/97: Fixed minor parsing error with C++ initializers. For example, class B : public A { public: B() : A() { ... }; ... } 11/23/97: Fixed the Tcl8 module so that C functions that call back into Tcl don't corrupt the return result object (SWIG was gathering the result object too early which leads to problems if subsequent Tcl calls are made). 11/23/97: Fixed a code generation bug in the Python module when two or more output parameters were used as the first arguments of a function. For example : %include typemaps.i void foo(double *OUTPUT, double *OUTPUT, double a); Previously, doing this resulted in the creation of an extraneous comma in the output, resulting in a C syntax error. 11/22/97: Fixed a bug when template handling that was stripping whitespace around nested templates. For example : Foo > was getting munged into Foo> which is a syntax error in in the C++ compiler. 11/22/97: Fixed bugs in the Borland C++ makefiles. 11/22/97: Fixed memory corruption bug when processing integer arguments in Tcl8 module. 11/21/97: Fixed a bug in the Runtime/Makefile related to Tcl 8. 11/21/97: Fixed a bug with the %new directive and Perl5 shadow classes. No longer generates a perl syntax error. 11/9/97 : Changed a strncpy() to strcpy() in the pointer type-checker. This results in a substantial performance improvement in type-checking. 10/29/97: Fixed a bug in the code generation of default arguments and user-defined types. For example : void foo(Vector a, Vector b = d); should now work properly. Version 1.1 Patch 2 (September 4, 1997) ======================================= 9/4/97 : Fixed problem with handling of virtual functions that was introduced by some changes in the C++ module. Version 1.1 Patch 1 (August 27, 1997) ===================================== 8/26/97 : Fixed compilation and run-time bugs with Tcl 8.0 final. 8/21/97 : Fixed code generation bug with arrays appearing as arguments to C++ member functions. For example : class Foo { public: void Bar(int a[20][20]); }; There is still a bug using arrays with added methods however. 8/20/97 : Fixed a bug with generating the code for added methods involving pass-by-value. 8/19/97 : Modified the typemapper to substitute the '$arg' value when declaring local variables. For example : %typemap(in) double * (double temp_$arg) { ... do something ... } When applied to a real function such as the following : void foo(double *a, double *b, double *result); three local variables will be created as follows : double temp_a; double temp_b; double temp_result; This can be used when writing multiple typemaps that need to access the same local variables. 7/27/97 : Fixed a variety of problems with the %apply directive and arrays. The following types of declarations should now work : %apply double [ANY] { Real [ANY] }; %apply double [4] { double [10] }; A generic version of apply like this : %apply double { Real }; should now work--even if arrays involving doubles and Reals are used later. 7/27/97 : Changed warning message about "Array X has been converted to Y" to only appear if running SWIG in verbose mode. 7/27/97 : Added the variables $parmname and $basemangle to the typemap generator. $parmname is the name of the parameter used when the typemap was matched. It may be "" if no parameter was used. $basemangle is a mangled version of the base datatype. Sometimes used for array handling. 7/27/97 : Changed the behavior of output arguments with Python shadow classes. Originally, if a function returned an object 'Foo', the shadow class mechanism would create code like this : def return_foo(): val = FooPtr(shadowc.return_foo()) val.this = 1 return val The problem with this is that typemaps allow a user to redefine the output behavior of a function--as a result, we can no longer make any assumptions about the return type being a pointer or even being a single value for that matter (it could be a list, tuple, etc...). If SWIG detects the use of output typemaps (either "out" or "argout") it returns the result unmodified like this : def return_foo(): val = shadowc.return_foo() return val In this case, it is up to the user to figure out what to do with the return value (including the possibility of converting it into a Python class). 7/26/97 : Fixed a parsing problem with types like 'unsigned long int', 'unsigned short int', etc... 7/24/97 : Minor bug fix to Tcl 8 module to parse enums properly. Also fixed a memory corruption problem in the type-checker. (patch contributed by Henry Rowley. 7/24/97 : Added Python-tuple typemaps contributed by Robin Dunn. 7/24/97 : Incorporated some changes to the Python module in support of Mark Hammond's COM support. I'm not entirely sure they work yet however. Needs documentation and testing. 7/24/97 : Fixed code generation bugs when structures had array members and typemaps were used. For example : %typemap(memberin) double [20][20] { ... get a double [20][20] ... } struct Foo { double a[20][20]; } Originally, this would generate a compiler-type error when the wrapper code was compiled. Now, a helper function like this is generated : double *Foo_a_set(Foo *a, double val[20][20]) { ... memberin typemap here ... return (double *) val; } When writing typemaps, one can assume that the source variable is an array of the *same* type as the structure member. This may break some codes that managed to work around the array bug. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 7/13/97 : Fixed bug in Perl5 module when using C global variables that are pointers. When used in function calls and other operations, the value of the pointer would be invalid---causing core dumps and other problems. SWIG implements global variables using Perl magic variables. As it turns out, the error was caused by the fact that the pointer-extraction code was somehow bypassing the procedure used to resolve magical variables (hence, leaving the value undefined). To fix the problem, SWIG now explicitly resolves magic before extracting pointer values. 7/12/97 : Eliminated the last remnants of free() and malloc() from the SWIG compiler. 7/12/97 : Fixed parsing problems with typemaps involving arrays and temporary variables of arrays. Also made it possible for SWIG to handle typemaps like this : %typemap(in) double [ANY] (double temp[$dim0]) { ... store data in temp[$dim0] ... } Not only does this typemap match any double [] array, it creates a local variable with precisely the right dimensions. (ie. $dim0 gets filled in with the real number of dimensions). Of course, off the record, this will be a way to add more functionality to the typemaps.i libraries. 7/9/97 : Fixed some problems with Perl5, static linking, and shadow classes. When statically linking multiple modules together, write a top-level interface file like this when shadow classes are not used : %module swig, foo, bar, glob; %include perlmain.i When shadow classes are used, the module names have an extra 'c' appended so it should read as : %module swig, fooc, barc, globc; %include perlmain.i When linking multiple modules, consider using the SWIG runtime library. 7/8/97 : Incorporated fixed versions of the Borland C++ Makefiles. 7/8/97 : First cut at trying to eliminate excessive compiler warnings. As it turns out, alot of warnings go away if you just make declarations like this clientData = clientData; in the resulting wrapper code. Most compilers should just ignore this code (at least would can hope). 7/8/97 : Fixed bizarre code generation bug with typemaps and C++ classes. In some cases, typemaps containing printf formatting strings such as %typemap(memberout) int * { printf("%d",42); } Would generate completely bogus code with garbage replacing the '%d'. Caused by one faulty use of printf (wasn't able to find any other occurences). 7/7/97 : Fixed bug in Python shadow class generation with non-member functions that are returning more than one value. 7/7/97 : Incorporated modifications to make SWIG work with Guile 1.2. Still need to test it out, but it is rumored to work. 7/2/97 : Fixed some bugs related to output arguments and Python shadow classes. If an output argument is detected, SWIG assumes that the result is a list and handles it appropriately. If the normal return type of an function is an object, it will be converted into a shadow class as before, but with the assumption that it is the first element of a list. *** NOTE : This behavior has been subsequently changed *** 6/29/97 : Changed EXPORT to SWIGEXPORT in all of the language modules. Should provide better compatibility with Windows. 6/29/97 : Modified Python shadow classes so that output arguments work correctly (when typemaps are used). Version 1.1 (June 24, 1997) =========================== 6/24/97 : Fixed Objective-C constructor bug when working with Perl5 shadow classes. 6/23/97 : Fixed some parsing problems with Objective-C. Declarations such as the following should work now : - foo : (int) a with: (int) b; 6/22/97 : Added SWIG Runtime library. This library contains the SWIG pointer type-checker and support functions that are normally included in every module. By using the library, it is easier to work with multiple SWIG generated modules. 6/22/97 : Fixed minor bug in Perl5 module related to static linking of multiple modules. 6/22/97 : Fixed some bugs with the %import directive. When used with Perl5 shadow classes, this generates a 'require' statement to load in external modules. 6/22/97 : Added -swiglib option. This prints out the location of the SWIG library and exits. This option is only really useful to configuration tools that are looking for SWIG and its library location (e.g. autoconf, configure, etc...). 6/21/97 : Fixed export bug with Perl5.004 on Windows-NT. 6/20/97 : Minor change to code generation of class/structure members in order to work better with typemaps. Should have no noticable impact on existing SWIG modules. 6/19/97 : Added -t option. This allows SWIG to load a typemap file before processing any declarations. For example : swig -t typemaps.i -python example.i At most, only one typemap file can be specified in this manner. *** NEW FEATURE *** 6/18/97 : Need a Makefile fast? Type swig [-tcl, -perl5, -python] -co Makefile and you will get a Makefile specific to that target language. You just need to modify it for your application and you're ready to run. 6/18/97 : Completed the -ci option. This option checks a file into the SWIG library. It should be used in conjunction with a language option. For example : swig -tcl -ci foobar.i Checks the file foobar.i into the Tcl part of the library. In order to check a file into the general library (accessible to all languages modules), do the following swig -ci -o ../foobar.i foobar.i (Admittedly this looks a little strange but is unavoidable). The check-in option is primarily designed for SWIG maintenance and library development. The command will fail if the user does not have write permission to the SWIG library. Third party library extensions can easily install themselves by simply providing a shell script that uses 'swig -ci' to install the appropriate library files. It is not necessary to know where the SWIG library is located if you use this mechanism. *** NEW FEATURE *** 6/16/97 : Fixed a bug in shadow class generation when %name() was applied to a class definition. Unfortunately, fixing the bug required a change in the Language C API by adding an extra argument to the Language::cpp_class_decl() function. This may break SWIG C++ extensions. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 6/15/97 : Added a warning message if no module name is specified with the %module directive or -module option. 6/15/97 : Fixed line number bug when reporting errors for undefined base classes. 6/15/97 : Added new %rename directive. This allows the forward declaration of a renaming. For example : %rename OldName NewName; .... later ... int OldName(int); Unlike %name, %rename will rename any occurence of the old name. This applies to functions, variables, class members and so forth. There is no way to disable %rename once set, but you can change the name by redeclaring it to something else. *** NEW FEATURE *** 6/15/97 : Improved the implementation of the %name directive so that it could be used with conditional compilation : #ifdef SWIG %name(NewName) #endif int OldName(int); 6/15/97 : Added support for functions with no return datatype. In this case, SWIG assumes a return type of 'int'. 6/11/97 : Improved error reporting in the parser. It should be a little less sensitive to errors that occur inside class definitions now. Also reports errors for function pointers. 6/11/97 : Made '$' a legal symbol in identifiers. This is to support some Objective-C libraries. Some compilers (such as gcc) may also allow identifiers to contain a $ in C/C++ code as well (this is an obscure feature of C). When '$' appears in identifier, SWIG remaps it to the string '_S_' when creating the scripting language function. Thus a function 'foo$bar' would be called 'foo_S_bar'. 6/11/97 : Fixed bug in Python shadow classes with __repr__ method. If supplied by the user, it was ignored, but now it should work. 6/9/97 : Fixed the Tcl 8.0 module to work with Tcl 8.0b1. SWIG is no longer compatible with *any* alpha release of Tcl 8.0. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 6/7/97 : Put a maximal error count in (currently set to 20). SWIG will bail out if it generates more errors than this (useful for preventing SWIG from printing 4000 syntax errors when it gets confused). 6/7/97 : Fixed segmentation fault when parsing variable length arguments. 6/7/97 : Minor change to Perl5 module. C++ static functions are now put in the same package as their class when using shadow classes. 6/7/97 : Centralized the naming of functions, members, wrappers etc... By centralizing the naming scheme, it should be possible to make some multi-file optimizations. Also, it should be possible to change SWIG's naming scheme (perhaps a new feature to be added later). 6/2/97 : Added 'arginit' typemap. This can be used to assign initial values to function arguments. Doing so makes it somewhat easier to detect improper argument passing when working with other typemaps. 6/2/97 : Fixed code generation bug when read-only variables were inherited into other classes. Under inheritance, the variables would become writable, but this has now been corrected. 5/30/97 : An empty %name() directive is no longer allowed or supported. This directive was originally used to strip the prefix off of a class or structure. Unfortunately, this never really seemed to work right and it complicated the C++ code generator significantly. As far as I can tell no one uses it, so it is now history. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 5/28/97 : Fixed a parsing bug with #define and C++ comments. Declarations such as the following now work properly : #define CONST 4 // A Comment 5/28/97 : Made some performance improvements to the SWIG String class. (only affects the SWIG compiler itself). 5/28/97 : Modified the parser to skip template definitions and issue a warning message. 5/28/97 : Preliminary support for parameterized types added (ie. templates). Types such as the following should pass through the SWIG compiler void foo(vector *a, vector *b); When used, the entire name 'vector' becomes the name of the datatype. Due to space limitations in datatype representations, the name should not exceed 96 characters. Note : This is only part of what is needed for template support. Template class definitions are not yet supported by SWIG. The template notation above may also be used when specifying Objective-C protocol lists. *** NEW FEATURE *** 5/24/97 : First cut at Objective-C support added. As it turns out, almost everything can be handled with only a few minor modifications to the C++ module. *** NEW FEATURE *** 5/23/97 : Fixed repeated definition bug in multiple inheritance handling when multiple base classes share a common base class (ie. the evil diamond). 5/21/97 : Fixed rather embarrassing typo that worked its way into the Tests/Build directory. 5/19/97 : Fixed code generation bug when using native methods and shadow classes with Python and Perl5 modules. 5/19/97 : Modified the %apply directive slightly so that it would work with pointers a little better. For example : %apply unsigned long { DWORD }; Applies *all* typemaps associated with "unsigned long" to "DWORD". This now includes pointers to the two datatypes. For example, a typemap applied to "unsigned long **" would also be applied to any occurrence of "DWORD **" as well. 5/19/97 : Fixed an ownership assignment bug in the Perl5 module when class members were returning new objects belonging to different classes. 5/17/97 : Added a few more typemap variables. $name - Name of function/variable/member $basetype - Base datatype (type without pointers) $argnum - Argument number 5/16/97 : Fixed embarrassing underscore error in local variable allocator. 5/16/97 : Fixed namespace clash bug in parameterized typemaps when creating arrays as new local variables. 5/15/97 : Fixed some bugs with inheritance of added methods across multiple files. SWIG now uses names of base classes when generating such functions. 5/14/97 : Finished support for default typemaps. Primarily used internally, they can be used to match the basic built-in datatypes used inside of SWIG. You can specify them in interface files as well like this : %typemap(tcl,in) int SWIG_DEFAULT_TYPE { $target = atoi($target); } Unlike normal typemaps, this default map will get applied to *all* integer datatypes encountered, including those renamed with typedef, etc... 5/13/97 : Fixed substring bug in type checker. 5/12/97 : Fixed bug in parameterized typemaps when declaring local variables of structures. Version 1.1 Beta6 (May 9, 1997) =============================== 5/9/97 : Fixed bizarre NULL pointer handling bug in Perl5 module. 5/8/97 : Fixed mysterious segmentation fault when running SWIG on an empty file. 5/7/97 : The code generator will now replace the special symbol "$cleanup" with the cleanup code specified with the "freearg" typemap. This change needed to properly manage memory and exceptions. 5/5/97 : Added the 'typemaps.i' library file. This contains a variety of common typemaps for input values, pointers, and so on. 5/5/97 : Changed behavior of "argout" typemap in Python module. Old versions automatically turned the result into a Python list. The new version does nothing, leaving the implementation up to the user. This provides more flexibility but may break older codes that rely on typemaps. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 5/5/97 : Fixed bug in Python module related to the interaction of "argout" and "ignore" typemaps. 5/5/97 : Fixed bug in Python module that would generate incorrect code if all function arguments are "ignored". 5/4/97 : Added %apply and %clear directives. These form a higher level interface to the typemap mechanism. In a nutshell, they can be used to change the processing of various datatypes without ever having to write a typemap. See the SWIG documentation for more details. ** NEW FEATURE ** 5/4/97 : Added a local variable extension to the typemap handler. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) double *(double temp) { temp = atof($source); $target = &temp; } In this case, 'temp' is a local variable that exists in the entire wrapper function (not just the typemap code). This mechanism provides better support for certain types of argument handling and also makes it possible to write thread-safe typemaps. Any number local variables can be declared by supplying a comma separated list. Local variables are guaranteed to be unique, even if the same typemap is applied many times in a given function. ** Not currently supported in Perl4 or Guile modules. 5/2/97 : Fixed processing of %ifdef, %endif, %if, etc... (These are SWIG equivalents of the C preprocessor directives that can pass through the C preprocessor without modification). 5/2/97 : Fixed major (but subtle) bug in the run-time type checker related to searching and type-checking for C++ inheritance. To make a long story short, if you had two classes named "Foo" and "FooObject" the type checker would sometimes get confused and be unable to locate "Foo" in an internal table. 5/2/97 : Fixed some bugs in the -co option. 4/24/97 : Pointer library added to the SWIG library. 4/19/97 : Added the %new directive. This is a "hint" that can be used to tell SWIG that a function is returning a new object. For example : %new Foo *create_foo(); This tells SWIG that create_foo() is creating a new object and returning a pointer to it. Many language modules may choose to ignore the hint, but when working with shadow classes, the %new is used to handle proper ownership of objects. %new can also be used with dynamically allocated strings. For example : %new char *create_string(); When used, all of the language modules will automatically cleanup the returned string--eliminating memory leaks. ** NEW FEATURE ** 4/19/97 : Added a new typemap "newfree". This is used in conjunction with the %new directive and can be used to change the method by which a new object returned by a function is deleted. 4/19/97 : The symbol "__cplusplus" is now defined in the SWIG interpreter when running with the -c++ option. 4/17/97 : Added support for static member functions when used inside the %addmethods directive. 4/15/97 : Added a special typemap symbol PREVIOUS that can be used to restore a previous typemap. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) int * = PREVIOUS; This is primarily used in library files. 4/13/97 : Added %pragma directive for Perl5 module. Two new pragmas are available : %pragma(perl5) code = "string" %pragma(perl5) include = "file.pl" Both insert code into the .pm file created by SWIG. This can be used to automatically customize the .pm file created by SWIG. 4/13/97 : Scanner modified to only recognize C++ keywords when the -c++ option has been specified. This provides support for C programs that make use of these keywords for identifiers. SWIG may need to be explicitly run with the -c++ option when compiling C++ code (this was allowed, but not recommended in previous versions). **POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY** 4/11/97 : Fixed a rather nasty bug in the Perl5 module related to using variable linking with complex datatypes and pointers. On Unix, code would work (somehow), but would cause an access violation under Windows-NT. The fix should correct the problem, but there may still be a problem using global variables of complex datatypes in conjunction with shadow classes. Fortunately, this sort of thing seems to be relatively rare (considering that the bug has been around for more than a year - yikes!). 4/11/97 : Fixed bizarre constant evaluation bug in Perl5 code generation when running under Windows-NT. 4/8/97 : Bug when using default arguments and C++ references fixed. 4/8/97 : Fixed code generation bugs in Python and Perl5 modules related to using class renaming (applying the %name directive to a class definition) and shadow classes. 4/7/97 : Fixed minor bugs in swigptr.swg, tcl8ptr.swg, and perl5ptr.swg to prevent infinite loops when weird datatypes are passed. 3/29/97 : 'Makefile.win' added. This is used to build most of the examples in the Examples directory under Windows NT/95. 3/27/97 : Fixes to SWIG's error return codes. SWIG now returns non-zero exit codes for certain kinds of errors (which makes it more friendly to makefiles). An overhaul of the error handling is on the to-do list and will probably show up in a later release. 3/25/97 : Bug fix. "freearg" and "argout" typemaps have been fixed in the Perl5 module. In previous versions, function input parameters and function output parameters shared the same memory space--causing all sorts of nasty problems when trying to pass perl values by reference. SWIG now internally makes a "copy" (which is really just a pointer) of affected parameters and uses that. This is done transparently so there is no noticable impact on any SWIG generated modules. This change is probably only noticable to expert users. 3/25/97 : Added type-check to verbose and stat mode. SWIG will now generate a list of all datatypes that were used but undefined (useful for tracking down weird bugs). This is enabled with the -v option (which is now officially known as "overly verbose" mode) or the -stat option. 3/25/97 : Slight change to the parser to make include guards work correctly. For example : #ifndef INTERFACE_I #define INTERFACE_I %module foobar.i ... declarations ... #endif 3/24/97 : %checkout directive added. This allows an interface file to extract files from the SWIG library and place them in the current directory. This can be used to extract scripts and other helper code that might be associated with library files. For example : %checkout array.tcl Will look for a file "array.tcl" in the library and copy it to the current directory. If the file already exists in the directory, this directive does nothing (it will not overwrite an existing file). This only an experimental feature for now. 3/24/97 : SWIG will now look in the SWIG Library for a file if it can't find it in the current directory. As a result, it is easy to make modules from SWIG library files. For example, if you want to make a Python module from the SWIG timers library, just type this in any directory : swig -python timers.i You will get the files timers_wrap.c and timers_wrap.doc in the current directory that you can now compile. The file remains in the SWIG library (although you can check it out using the -co option). *** New Feature *** 3/24/97 : -co option added to SWIG to allow easy access to the SWIG library. When used, this instructs SWIG to check out a library file and place it in the current directory. For example : unix > swig -co array.i array.i checked out from the SWIG library unix > Once in your directory you can customize the file to suit your particular purposes. The checkout option makes it easy to grab library files without knowing anything about the SWIG installation, but it also makes it possible to start including scripts, C code, and other miscellaneous files in the library. For example, you could put a cool script in the library and check it out whenever you wanted to use it. *** New Feature *** 3/24/97 : #pragma export directives added to Tcl output for compiling shared libraries on the Mac. 3/24/97 : Minor changes to wish.i and tclsh.i library files to provide support for the Macintosh. 3/19/97 : SWIG's policy towards NULL pointers has been relaxed. The policy of requiring a special compiler directive -DALLOW_NULL to use NULL pointers is no longer supported. While this may seem "unsafe", it turns out that you can use a "check" typemap to achieve some safety. For example : %typemap(perl5,check) Node * { if (!$target) croak("NULL Pointers not allowed."); } This prevents any NULL value of a "Node *" pointer to be passed to a function. (I think this is much cleaner than the old -DALLOW_NULL hack anyways). 3/19/97 : Fixed pointer handling errors in Perl5 module. Modules no longer core dump when a Perl reference is inadvertently passed in as a C pointer. 3/18/97 : Added a "check" typemap. This can be used to check the validity of function input values. For example : %typemap(perl5,check) int posint { if ($target < 0) croak("Argument is not a positive integer"); } 3/18/97 : Added an $arg variable to Tcl typemaps. This makes it easier to return argument values by "reference". 3/18/97 : Fixed a code generation bug when using C++ references and the %addmethods directive. 3/18/97 : Fixed a few glitches in the typemap module with respect to chaining. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) int { $in // Inserts prexisting typemap printf("Received a %d\n", $target); } This has been allowed for quite some time, but didn't work if no existing typemap was defined. Now, it still doesn't work if no existing typemap is defined, but it issues a warning message. There is some support using default typemaps, but none of the language modules take advantage of it. This should be considered experimental at this time. Version 1.1b5 Patch 1 (March 16, 1997) ====================================== 3/16/97 : Fixed references bug with C++ code generation. 3/16/97 : Fixed initialization bug in the documentation system that was causing weird problems. 3/16/97 : Fixed fatal bug with -c option in the Python module. 3/13/97 : Fixed bug in the documentation system involving the %text directive and sorting. In the old system, %text entries would float to the top of a section because they were "nameless". Now they are attached to the previous declaration and will stay in the proper location relative to the previous entry. Version 1.1b5 (March 12, 1997) ============================== 3/11/97 : Fixed compilation problems introduced by Tcl/Tk 8.0a2. *** INCOMPATIBILITY *** SWIG no longer works with Tcl/Tk 8.0a1. 3/10/97 : Fixed bug with ignored arguments and C++ member functions in the Python module. 3/9/97 : Parsing bugs with nested class definitions and privately declared nested class definitions fixed. 3/9/97 : Fixed a few minor code generation bugs with C++ classes and constructors. In some cases, the resulting wrapper code would not compile properly. SWIG now attempts to use the default copy constructor instead. 3/8/97 : Added a -l option to SWIG that allows additional SWIG library files to be grabbed without having them specified in the interface file. This makes it easier to keep the interface file clean and move certain options into a Makefile. For example : swig -tcl example.i # Build a normal Tcl extension swig -tcl -lwish.i example.i # Build it as a wish extension # by including the 'wish.i' file. swig -python example.i # Build a dynamically loaded extension swig -python -lembed.i example.i # Build a static extension These kinds of options could previously be accomplished with conditional compilation such as : %module example ... #ifdef STATIC %include embed.i #endif 3/8/97 : Incorporated changes to Guile module to use the new gh interface in FSF Guile 1.0. The older gscm interface used in Cygnus Guile releases is no longer supported by SWIG. 3/8/97 : Cleaned up the Tcl Netscape plugin example. It should work with version 1.1 of the plugin now. 3/8/97 : Added better array support to the typemap module. The keyword ANY can now be used to match any array dimension. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) double [ANY] { ... get an array ... } This will match any single-dimensional double array. The array dimension is passed in the variables $dim0, $dim1, ... $dim9. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) double [ANY][ANY][ANY] { printf("Received a double[%d][%d][%d]\n",$dim0,$dim1,$dim2); } Any typemap involving a specific array dimension will override any specified with the ANY tag. Thus, a %typemap(tcl,in) double [5][4][ANY] {} would override a double [ANY][ANY][ANY]. However, overuse of the ANY tag in arrays of high-dimensions may not work as you expect due to the pattern matching rule used. For example, which of the following typemaps has precedence? %typemap(in) double [ANY][5] {} // Avoid this! %typemap(in) double [5][ANY] {} 3/7/97 : Fixed a number of bugs related to multi-dimensional array handling. Typedefs involving multi-dimensional arrays now works correctly. For example : typedef double MATRIX[4][4]; ... extern double foo(MATRIX a); Typecasting of pointers into multi-dimensional arrays is now implemented properly when making C/C++ function calls. 3/6/97 : Fixed potentially dangerous bug in the Tcl Object-oriented interface. Well, actually, didn't fix it but issued a Tcl error instead. The bug would manifest itself as follows: % set l [List] # Create an object ... % set m [List -this $l] # Make $m into an object assuming $l # contains a pointer. # Since $m == $l, $l gets destroyed # (since its the same command name) % $m insert Foo Segmentation fault # Note : the list no longer exists! Now, an error will be generated instead of redefining the command. As in : % set l [List] ... % set m [List -this $l] Object name already exists! Use catch{} to ignore the error. 3/3/97 : Better support for enums added. Datatypes of 'enum MyEnum' and typedefs such as 'typedef enum MyEnum Foo;' now work. 3/3/97 : Parser modified to ignore constructor initializers such as : class Foo : public Bar { int a,b; public: Foo(int i) : a(0), b(i), Bar(i,0) { }; }; 3/3/97 : Modified parser to ignore C++ exception specifications such as : int foo(double) throw(X,Y); 3/3/97 : Added %import directive. This works exactly like %extern except it tells the language module that the declarations are coming from a separate module. This is usually only needed when working with shadow classes. 3/2/97 : Changed pointer type-checker to be significantly more efficient when working with derived datatypes. This has been accomplished by storing type-mappings in sorted order, using binary search schemes, and caching recently used datatypes. For SWIG generated C++ modules that make a large number of C function calls with derived types, this could result in speedups of between 100 and 50000 percent. However, due to the required sorting operation, module loading time may increased slightly when there are lots of datatypes. 3/2/97 : Fixed some C++ compilation problems with Python embed.i library files. 2/27/97 : Slight change to C++ code generation to use copy constructors when returning complex data type by value. 2/26/97 : Fixed bug in Python module with -c option. 2/26/97 : Slight tweak of parser to allow trailing comma in enumerations such as enum Value (ALE, STOUT, LAGER, }; 2/25/97 : Fixed code generation bug in Tcl module when using the %name() directive on a classname. 2/25/97 : Finished code-size optimization of C++ code generation with inheritance of attributes. Inherited attributes now only generate one set of wrapper functions that are re-used in any derived classes. This could provide big code size improvements in some scripting language interfaces. 2/25/97 : Perl5 module modified to support both the Unix and Windows versions. The windows version has been tested with the Activeware port of Perl 5.003 running under Windows 95. The C source generated by SWIG should compile without modification under both versions of Perl, but is now even more hideous than before. 2/25/97 : Modified parser to allow scope resolution operation to appear in expressions and default arguments as in : void foo(int a = Bar::defvalue); 2/25/97 : Fixed bug when resolving symbols inside C++ classes. For example : class Foo { public: enum Value {ALE, STOUT, LAGER}; ... void defarg(Value v = STOUT); }; 2/24/97 : Fixed bug with member functions returning void *. 2/23/97 : Modified Python module to be better behaved under Windows - Module initialization function is now properly exported. It should not be neccessary to explicitly export this function yourself. - Bizarre compilation problems when compiling the SWIG wrapper code as ANSI C under Visual C++ 4.x fixed. - Tested with both the stock Python-1.4 distribution and Pythonwin running under Win95. 2/19/97 : Fixed typedef handling bug in Perl5 shadow classes. 2/19/97 : Added exception support. To use it, do the following : %except(lang) { ... try part of the exception ... $function ... catch part of exception ... } $function is a SWIG variable that will be replaced by the actual C/C++ function call in a wrapper function. Thus, a real exception specification might look like this : %except(perl5) { try { $function } catch (char *& sz) { ... process an exception ... } catch(...) { croak("Unknown exception. Bailing out..."); } } 2/19/97 : Added support for managing generic code fragments (needed for exceptions). 2/19/97 : Fixed some really obscure typemap scoping bugs in the C++ handler. 2/18/97 : Cleaned up perlmain.i file by removing some problematic, but seemingly unnecessary declarations. 2/18/97 : Optimized handling of member functions under inheritance. SWIG can now use wrapper functions generated for a base class instead of regenerating wrappers for the same functions in a derived class. This could make a drastic reduction in wrapper code size for C++ applications with deep inheritance hierarchies and lots of functions. 2/18/97 : Additional methods specified with %addmethods can now be inherited along with normal C++ member functions. 2/18/97 : Minor internal fixes to make SWIG's string handling a little safer. 2/16/97 : Moved some code generation of Tcl shadow classes to library files. 2/16/97 : Fixed documentation error of '-configure' method in Tcl modules. 2/16/97 : Modified Perl5 module slightly to allow typemaps to use Perl references. 2/12/97 : Fixed argument checking bug that was introduced by default arguments (function calls with too many arguments would still be executed). Functions now must have the same number of arguments as C version (with possibility of default/optional arguments still supported). 2/12/97 : Fixed default argument bug in Perl5 module when generating wrapper functions involving default arguments of complex datatypes. 2/12/97 : Fixed typemap scoping problems. For example : %typemap(tcl,in) double { .. get a double .. } class Foo { public: double bar(double); } %typemap(tcl,in) double { .. new get double .. } Would apply the second typemap to all functions in Foo due to delayed generation of C++ wrapper code (clearly this is not the desired effect). Problem has been fixed by assigning unique numerical identifiers to every datatype in an interface file and recording the "range of effect" of each typemap. 2/11/97 : Added support for "ignore" and "default" typemaps. Only use if you absolutely know what you're doing. 2/9/97 : Added automatic creation of constructors and destructors for C structs and C++ classes that do not specify any sort of constructor or destructor. This feature can be enabled by running SWIG with the '-make_default' option or by inserting the following pragma into an interface file : %pragma make_default The following pragma disables automatic constructor generation %pragma no_default 2/9/97 : Added -make_default option for producing default constructors and destructors for classes without them. 2/9/97 : Changed the syntax of the SWIG %pragma directive to %pragma option=value or %pragma(lang) option=value. This change makes the syntax a little more consistent between general pragmas and language-specific pragmas. The old syntax still works, but will probably be phased out (a warning message is currently printed). 2/9/97 : Improved Tcl support of global variables that are of structures, classes, and unions. 2/9/97 : Fixed C++ compilation problem in Python 'embed.i' library file. 2/9/97 : Fixed missing return value in perlmain.i library file. 2/9/97 : Fixed Python shadow classes to return an AttributeError when undefined attributes are accessed (older versions returned a NameError). 2/9/97 : Fixed bug when %addmethods is used after a class definition whose last section is protected or private. 2/8/97 : Made slight changes in include file processing to support the Macintosh. 2/8/97 : Extended swigmain.cxx to provide a rudimentary Macintosh interface. It's a really bad interface, but works until something better is written. 1/29/97 : Fixed type-casting bug introduced by 1.1b4 when setting/getting the value of global variables involving complex data types. 1/29/97 : Removed erroneous white space before an #endif in the code generated by the Python module (was causing errors on DEC Alpha compilers). 1/26/97 : Fixed errors when using default/optional arguments in Python shadow shadow classes. 1/23/97 : Fixed bug with nested %extern declarations. 1/21/97 : Fixed problem with typedef involving const datatypes. 1/21/97 : Somewhat obscure, but serious bug with having multiple levels of typedefs fixed. For example : typedef char *String; typedef String Name; Version 1.1 Beta4 (January 16, 1997) ==================================== Note : SWIG 1.1b3 crashed and burned shortly after take off due to a few major run-time problems that surfaced after release. This release should fix most, if not all, of those problems. 1/16/97 : Fixed major memory management bug on Linux 1/14/97 : Fixed bug in functions returning constant C++ references. 1/14/97 : Modified C++ module to handle datatypes better. 1/14/97 : Modified parser to allow a *single* scope resolution operator in datatypes. Ie : Foo::bar. SWIG doesn't yet handle nested classes, so this should be sufficient for now. 1/14/97 : Modified parser to allow typedef inside a C++ class. 1/14/97 : Fixed some problems related to datatypes defined inside a C++ class. SWIG was not generating correct code, but a new scoping mechanism and method for handling datatypes inside a C++ class have been added. 1/14/97 : Changed enumerations to use the value name instead of any values that might have appeared in the interface file. This makes the code a little more friendly to C++ compilers. 1/14/97 : Removed typedef bug that made all enumerations equivalent to each other in the type checker (since it generated alot of unnecessary code). Version 1.1 Beta3 (January 9, 1997) ==================================== Note : A *huge* number of changes related to ongoing modifications. 1. Support for C++ multiple inheritance added. 2. Typemaps added. 3. Some support for nested structure definitions added. 4. Default argument handling added. 5. -c option added for building bare wrapper code modules. 6. Rewrote Pointer type-checking to support multiple inheritance correctly. 7. Tcl 8.0 module added. 8. Perl4 and Guile modules resurrected from the dead (well, they at least work again). 9. New Object Oriented Tcl interface added. 10. Bug fixes to Perl5 shadow classes. 11. Cleaned up many of the internal modules of the parser. 12. Tons of examples and testing modules added. 13. Fixed bugs related to use of "const" return values. 14. Fixed bug with C++ member functions returning void *. 15. Changed SWIG configuration script. Version 1.1 Beta2 (December 3, 1996) ==================================== 1. Completely rewrote the SWIG documentation system. The changes involved are too numerous to mention. Basically, take everything you knew about the old system, throw them out, and read the file Doc/doc.ps. 2. Limited support for #if defined() added. 3. Type casts are now allowed in constant expressions. ie #define A (int) 3 4. Added support for typedef lists. For example : typedef struct { double x,y,z; } Vector, *VectorPtr; 5. New SWIG directives (related to documentation system) %style %localstyle %subsection %subsubsection 6. Reorganized the C++ handling and made it a little easier to work with internally. 7. Fixed problem with inheriting data members in Python shadow classes. 8. Fixed symbol table problems with shadow classes in both Python and Perl. 9. Fixed annoying segmentation fault bug in wrapper code generated for Perl5. 10. Fixed bug with %addmethods directive. Now it can be placed anywhere in a class. 11. More test cases added to the SWIG self-test. Documentation tests are now performed along with other things. 12. Reorganized the SWIG library a little bit and set it up to self-document itself using SWIG. 13. Lots and lots of minor bug fixes (mostly obscure, but bugs nonetheless). Version 1.1 Beta1 (October 30, 1996) ==================================== 1. Added new %extern directive for handling multiple files 2. Perl5 shadow classes added 3. Rewrote conditional compilation to work better 4. Added 'bool' datatype 5. %{,%} block is now optional. 6. Fixed some bugs in the Python shadow class module 7. Rewrote all of the SWIG tests to be more informative (and less scary). 8. Rewrote parameter list handling to be more memory efficient and flexible. 9. Changed parser to ignore 'static' declarations. 10. Initializers are now ignored. For example : struct FooBar a = {3,4,5}; 11. Somewhat better parsing of arrays (although it's usually just a better error message now). 12. Lot's of minor bug fixes. Version 1.0 Final (August 31, 1996) =================================== 1. Fixed minor bug in C++ module 2. Fixed minor bug in pointer type-checker when using -DALLOW_NULL. 3. Fixed configure script to work with Python 1.4beta3 4. Changed configure script to allow compilation without yacc or bison. Version 1.0 Final (August 28, 1996) =================================== 1. Changed parser to support more C/C++ datatypes (well, more variants). Types like "unsigned", "short int", "long int", etc... now work. 2. "unions" added to parser. 3. Use of "typedef" as in : typedef struct { double x,y,z; } Vector; Now works correctly. The name of the typedef is used as the structure name. 4. Conditional compilation with #ifdef, #else, #endif, etc... added. 5. New %disabledoc, %enabledoc directives allow documentation to selectively be disabled for certain parts of a wrapper file. 6. New Python module supports better variable linking, constants, and shadow classes. 7. Perl5 module improved with better compatibility with XS and xsubpp. SWIG pointers and now created so that they are compatible with xsubpp pointers. 8. Support for [incr Tcl] namespaces added to Tcl module. 9. %pragma directive added. 10. %addmethods directive added. 11. %native directive added to allow pre-existing wrapper functions to be used. 12. Wrote configure script for SWIG installation. 13. Function pointers now allowed with typedef statements. 14. %typedef modified to insert a corresponding C typedef into the output file. 15. Fixed some problems related to C++ references. 16. New String and WrapperFunction classes add to make generating wrapper code easier. 17. Fixed command line option processing to eliminate core dumps and to allow help messages. 18. Lot's of minor bug fixes to almost all code modules Version 1.0 Beta 3 (Patch 1) July 17, 1996 ========================================== 1.0 Final is not quite ready yet, but this release fixes a number of immediate problems : 1. Compiler errors when using -strict 1 type checking have been fixed. 2. Pointer type checker now recognizes pointers of the form _0_Type correctly. 3. A few minor fixes were made in the Makefile Version 1.0 Beta 3 (June 14, 1996) =================================== There are lots of changes in this release : 1. SWIG is now invoked using the "swig" command instead of "wrap". Hey, swig sounds cooler. 2. The SWIG_LIB environment variable can be set to change the location where SWIG looks for library files. 3. C++ support has been added. You should use the -c++ option to enable it. 4. The %init directive has been replaced by the %module directive. %module constructs a valid name for the initialization function for whatever target language you're using (actually this makes SWIG files a little cleaner). The old %init directive still works. 5. The syntax of the %name directive has been changed. Use of the old one should generate a warning message, but may still work. 6. To support Tcl/Tk on non-unix platforms, SWIG imports a file called swigtcl.cfg from the $(SWIG_LIB)/tcl directory. I don't have access to an NT machine, but this file is supposedly allows SWIG to produce wrapper code that compiles on both UNIX and non UNIX machines. If this doesn't work, you'll have to edit the file swigtcl.cfg. Please let me know if this doesn't work so I can update the file as necessary. 7. The SWIG run-time typechecker has been improved. You can also now redefine how it works by supplying a file called "swigptr.cfg" in the same directory as your SWIG interface files. By default, SWIG reads this file from $(SWIG_LIB)/config. 8. The documentation system has been changed to support the following : - Documentation order is printed in interface file order by default. This can be overridden by putting an %alpha directive in the beginning of the interface file. - You can supply additional documentation text using %text %{ put your text here %} - A few minor bugs were fixed. 9. A few improvements have been made to the handling of command line options (but it's still not finished). 10. Lots of minor bug fixes in most of the language modules have been made. 11. Filenames have been changed to 8.3 for compatibility with a SWIG port to non-unix platforms (work in progress). 12. C++ file suffix is now .cxx (for same reason). 13. The documentation has been upgraded significantly and is now around 100 pages. I added new examples and a section on C++. The documentation now includes a Table of Contents. 14. The SWIG Examples directory is still woefully sparse, but is getting better. Special notice about C++ ------------------------ This is the first version of SWIG to support C++ parsing. Currently the C++ is far from complete, but seems to work for simple cases. No work has been done to add special C++ processing to any of the target languages. See the user manual for details about how C++ is handled. If you find problems with the C++ implementation, please let me know. Expect major improvements in this area. Note : I have only successfully used SWIG and C++ with Tcl and Python. Notice about Version 1.0Final ----------------------------- Version 1.0B3 is the last Beta release before version 1.0 Final is released. I have frozen the list of features supported in version 1.0 and will only fix bugs as they show up. Work on SWIG version 2.0 is already in progress, but is going to result in rather significant changes to SWIG's internal structure (hopefully for the better). No anticipated date for version 2.0 is set, but if you've got an idea, let me know. Version 1.0 Beta 2 (April 26, 1996) =================================== This release is identical to Beta1 except a few minor bugs are fixed and the SWIG library has been updated to work with Tcl 7.5/Tk 4.1. A tcl7.5 examples directory is now included. - Fixed a bug in the Makefile that didn't install the libraries correctly. - SWIG Library files are now updated to work with Tcl 7.5 and Tk 4.1. - Minor bug fixes in other modules. Version 1.0 Beta 1 (April 10, 1996). ===================================== This is the first "semi-official" release of SWIG. It has a number of substantial improvements over the Alpha release. These notes are in no particular order--hope I remembered everything.... 1. Tcl/Tk SWIG is known to work with Tcl7.3, Tk3.6 and later versions. I've also tested SWIG with expect-5.19. Normally SWIG expects to use the header files "tcl.h" and "tk.h". Newer versions of Tcl/Tk use version numbers. You can specify these in SWIG as follows : % wrap -htcl tcl7.4.h -htk tk4.0.h example.i Of course, I prefer to simply set up symbolic links between "tcl.h" and the most recent stable version on the machine. 2. Perl4 This implementation has been based on Perl-4.035. SWIG's interface to Perl4 is based on the documentation provided in the "Programming Perl" book by Larry Wall, and files located in the "usub" directory of the Perl4 distribution. In order to compile with Perl4, you'll need to link with the uperl.o file found in the Perl4 source directory. You may want to move this file to a more convenient location. 3. Perl5 This is a somewhat experimental implementation, but is alot less buggy than the alpha release. SWIG operates independently of the XS language and xsubpp supplied with Perl5. Currently SWIG produces the necessary C code and .pm file needed to dynamically load a module into Perl5. To support Perl5's notion of modules and packages (as with xsubpp), you can use the following command line options : % wrap -perl5 -module MyModule -package MyPackage example.i Note : In order for dynamic loading to be effective, you need to be careful about naming. For a module named "MyModule", you'll need to create a shared object file called "MyModule.so" using something like % ld -shared my_obj.o -o MyModule.so The use of the %init directive must match the module name since Perl5 calls a function "boot_ModuleName" in order to initialize things. See the Examples directory for some examples of how to get things to work. 4. Python1.3 This is the first release supporting Python. The Python port is experimental and may be rewritten. Variable linkage is done through functions which is sort of a kludge. I also think it would be nice to import SWIG pointers into Python as a new object (instead of strings). Of course, this needs a little more work. 5. Guile3 If you really want to live on the edge, pick up a copy of Guile-iii and play around with this. This is highly experimental---especially since I'm not sure what the official state of Guile is these days. This implementation may change at any time should I suddenly figure out better ways to do things. 6. Extending SWIG SWIG is written in C++ although I tend to think of the code as mostly being ANSI C with a little inheritance thrown in. Each target language is implemented as a C++ class that can be plugged into the system. If you want to add your own modifications, see Appendix C of the user manual. Then take a look at the "user" directory which contains some code for building your own extenions. 7. The SWIG library The SWIG library is still incomplete. Some of the files mentioned in the user manual are unavailable. These files will be made available when they are ready. Subscribe to the SWIG mailing list for announcements and updates. 8. SWIG Documentation I have sometimes experienced problems viewing the SWIG documentation in some postscript viewers. However, the documentation seems to print normally. I'm working on making much of the documentation online, but this takes time. Version 0.1 Alpha (February 9, 1996) ==================================== 1. Run-time type-checking of SWIG pointers. Pointers are now represented as strings with both numeric and encoded type information. This makes it a little harder to shoot yourself in the foot (and it eliminates some segmentation faults and other oddities). 2. Python 1.3 now supported. 3. #define and enum can be used to install constants. 4. Completely rewrote the %include directive and made it alot more powerful. 5. Restructured the SWIG library to make it work better. 6. Various bug fixes to Tcl, Perl4, Perl5, and Guile implementations. 7. Better implementation of %typedef directive. 8. Made some changes to SWIG's class structure to make it easier to expand. SWIG is now built into a library file that you can use to make your own extenions. 9. Made extensive changes to the documentation. 10. Minor changes to the SWIG parser to make it use less memory. Also took out some extraneous rules that were undocumented and didn't work in the first place. 11. The SWIG library files "tclsh", "wish", "expect", etc... in the first release have been restructured and renamed to "tclsh.i", "wish.i", and so on.