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SWIG (Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator)
Version: 1.3.11 (February 1, 2002)
$Header: /cvs/projects/SWIG/README,v 1.29.2.5.2.21 2002/02/01 14:47:10 beazley Exp $
Tagline: SWIG is a compiler that integrates C and C++ with
languages including Perl, Python, Tcl, Guile, Mzscheme,
Java, Ruby, and PHP.
SWIG reads annotated C/C++ header files and creates wrapper code (glue
code) in order to make the corresponding C/C++ libraries available to
the listed languages, or to extend C/C++ programs with a scripting
language.
This distribution represents the latest development release of SWIG,
aiming to replace versions 1.1p5 and 1.1-883. The guilty parties
working on this are:
Dave Beazley (beazley@cs.uchicago.edu) (SWIG core)
William Fulton (wsf@fultondesigns.co.uk) (Java)
Matthias Kppe (mkoeppe@mail.math.uni-magdeburg.de) (Guile/MzScheme)
Loic Dachary (loic@ceic.com) (Perl5)
Jason Stewart (jason@openinformatics.com) (Perl5)
Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn@glug.org) (Testing/Misc)
Lyle Johnson (ljohnson@resgen.com) (Ruby)
Masaki Fukushima (fukusima@goto.info.waseda.ac.jp) (Ruby)
Richard Palmer (richard@magicality.org) (PHP)
Luigi Ballabio (ballabio@mac.com) (Macintosh port)
Past contributors include:
Clark McGrew, Dustin Mitchell, Ian Cooke, Catalin Dumitrescu, Baran
Kovuk, Gary Holt, David Fletcher, Oleg Tolmatcev, Harco de Hilster.
(See CHANGES for a more complete list).
Up-to-date SWIG related information can be found at
http://www.swig.org
A SWIG FAQ and other hints can be found on the SWIG Wiki:
http://swig.cs.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! Previous SWIG users should read the documentation !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! file Doc/Manual/SWIG.html before trying to use SWIG1.3 !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! on existing SWIG interfaces. This is the most current !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! documentation that describes new 1.3 features and !!!!!!!
!!!!!!! incompatibilities. !!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What's New?
===========
The most notable changes since SWIG1.1 include the following:
- Support for C++ overloaded operators.
- Support for C++ templates.
- Improved support for overloaded functions/methods.
- Parsing support for almost all C/C++ datatypes.
- Pointers to members are now supported in the parser
and by the Python module.
- Improved support for pointers to functions and callbacks.
- SWIG now has a full C preprocessor.
- Code generation for the Tcl and Python modules has been
substantially improved both in terms of size and runtime
efficiency (Perl5 is coming along too).
- The Guile module is stable. It represents C pointers as smobs and
supports the Guile module system and exceptions.
- Java, Ruby, MzScheme, PHP4 modules added.
- Redesigned implementation of typemaps. Typemaps can now be defined
for groups of consecutive function arguments. This has been a long
requested feature that now works.
- Better code generation. SWIG is better able to make optimizations
in order to generate less code.
- Testing framework part of the distribution ("make -k check" support).
- A lot of minor bug fixes and cleanup.
- Better Windows support.
Here are a few missing features:
- The SWIG1.1 documentation system is gone and hasn't been
replaced yet. This is on the long-term to-do list.
- The Tcl7.x and Perl4 modules are deprecated and no longer
included.
- The Perl5 module is need in some repair and may not work
with ActivePerl. We are looking for volunteers to help us
with this.
- A wide variety of old SWIG command-line options and
obscure features are gone.
- A lot of old %pragma directives and obscure undocumented
customization features have been eliminated. The same
functionality is now available through other means.
- Objective C support doesn't work right now. No ETA as to
when it will return.
Although we are making some attempt to preserve backwards
compatibility with interfaces written for SWIG1.1, SWIG1.3
incorporates a number of very substantial modifications to things such
as type handling, typemaps, and wrapper code generation. Therefore,
if you are making extensive use of advanced SWIG features, interfaces
written for SWIG1.1 may not work. We apologize for the inconvenience,
but these changes are needed in order to fix a number of annoying
"features" in SWIG1.1. Hopefully the list of new features will
provide enough incentive for you to upgrade (and that the modifications
to your interfaces will only be minor).
In addition, SWIG1.3 makes no attempt to be compatible with SWIG1.1 at
the C++ API level so language modules written for SWIG1.1 will most
definitely not work with this release.
The files NEW and CHANGES describe in some detail all of the important
changes that have been made to the system. Experienced users would be
well advised to read this.
Windows Installation
====================
Please see the Doc/Manual/Windows.html file for instructions on installing
SWIG on Windows and running the examples. The Windows distribution is
called swigwin and includes a prebuilt SWIG executable, swig.exe, included in
the same directory as this README file. Otherwise it is exactly the same as
the main SWIG distribution. There is no need to download anything else.
Unix Installation
=================
To build and install SWIG, simply type the following:
% ./configure
% make
% make -k check # this step is optional (see note below)
% make install
By default SWIG installs itself in /usr/local. If you need to install SWIG in
a different location or in your home directory, use the --prefix option
to ./configure. For example:
% ./configure --prefix=/home/yourname/projects
% make
% make -k check
% make install
Note: the directory given to --prefix must be an absolute pathname. Do *NOT* use
the ~ shell-escape to refer to your home directory. SWIG won't work properly
if you do this.
The file INSTALL details more about using configure. Also try
% ./configure --help.
The configure script will attempt to locate various packages on your
machine, including Tcl, Perl5, Python and other target languages that SWIG
uses. Don't panic if you get 'not found' messages--SWIG does not need these
packages to compile or run. The configure script is actually looking for
these packages so that you can try out the SWIG examples contained
in the 'Examples' directory without having to hack Makefiles.
Notes:
(1) If you checked the code out via CVS, you will have to run ./autogen.sh
before typing 'configure'. In addition, a full build of SWIG requires
the use of bison.
(2) 'make -k check' is a new feature that requires at least one of the target
languages to be installed and which performs compile/link level testing
of the examples. If it fails, it may mean that you have an uninstalled
language module or that the file 'Examples/Makefile' has been
incorrectly configured. It may also fail due to compiler issues
such as broken C++ compiler. Even if 'make -k check' fails, there is a
pretty good chance SWIG still works correctly---you will just have
to mess around with one of the examples and some makefiles first.
(3) The testing suite executed by 'make -k check' is designed to stress-test
many parts of the implementation including obscure corner cases. If some
of these tests fail or generate warning messages, there is no reason for
alarm---the test may be related to some new SWIG feature or a difficult bug
that we're trying to resolve. Chances are that SWIG will work just fine
for you.
Examples
========
The Examples directory contains a variety of examples of using SWIG
and it has some browsable documentation. Simply point your browser to
the file "Example/index.html".
The Examples directory now includes Visual C++ project (.dsp) files for
building some of the examples on Windows (new in SWIG1.3.7).
Troubleshooting
===============
In order to operate correctly, SWIG relies upon a set of library
files. If after building SWIG, you get error messages like this,
% swig foo.i
:1. Unable to find 'swig.swg'
:3. Unable to find 'tcl8.swg'
it means that SWIG has either been incorrectly configured or
installed. To fix this:
1. Make sure you remembed to do a 'make install' and that
the installation actually worked. Make sure you have
write permission on the install directory.
2. If that doesn't work, type 'swig -swiglib' to find out
where SWIG thinks its library is located.
3. If the location is not where you expect, perhaps
you supplied a bad option to configure. Use
./configure --prefix=pathname to set the SWIG install
location. Also, make sure you don't include a shell
escape character such as ~ when you specify the path.
4. The SWIG library can be changed by setting the SWIG_LIB
environment variable. However, you really shouldn't
have to do this.
If you are having other troubles, you might look at the SWIG Wiki at
http://swig.cs.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl.
Documentation
=============
The Doc/Manual directory contains the most recent set of updated
documentation for this release. As this is an unstable development
release, the documentation is not entirely up to date and is being worked
on. We are working on it, but there is a lot of documentation and it
is going to take time to complete. Please be patient.
!! The most up-to-date information concerning new features in SWIG1.3 is the
!! file Doc/Manual/SWIG.html.
There is some technical documentation available in the Doc/Devel
subdirectory. This is not necessarily up-to-date, but it has some
information on SWIG internals.
Participate!
============
Please report any errors and submit patches (if possible)! We only
have access to a limited variety of hardware (Linux, Solaris, and
Windows). All contributions help.
If you would like to join the SWIG development team or contribute a
language module to the distribution, please contact beazley@cs.uchicago.edu.
-- The SWIG Maintainers
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