Reporting system and potentially Python

[Derek Atkins]

On Wed, November 16, 2011 12:40 am, John Ralls wrote:
>
> On Nov 15, 2011, at 9:16 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Tue, November 15, 2011 11:17 pm, John Ralls wrote:
>>>
>>> On Nov 15, 2011, at 7:24 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> This depends on your definition of 'wrapped.'  In general, C
>>>> structures
>>>> are mapped to Scheme as opaque pointer objects, which requires using
>>>> getters/setters from guile to manipulate the object.  For example, you
>>>> can't just do Account->desc in scheme, you need to use
>>>> (xaccAccountGetDescription acc).
>>>
>>> Has anyone ever tried using the gnome 2 Guile bindings and whatever is
>>> the
>>> g_object_get mechanism from Guile?
>>
>> Probably not, because I don't think it existed in a sufficient maturity
>> the last time we did a scheme generator migration (g-wrap -> swig).
>> What
>> is the current maturity of these bindings?  How supported are they?  Are
>> they being actively developed and maintained?  What does it buy us that
>> we
>> don't already have?
>
> It's different from gwrap or swig (that would be gobject-introspection,
> which doesn't appear to be well supported,
> unfortunately). Rather, it is a guile "library" like slib or ice-9 that
> permits calling GObject functions without explicitly
> wrapping subclasses. It would let us simplify the API by e.g., not having
> to export explicit getters/setters, directly using
> GObject memory management, and so on.
>
> (FWIW, Python integration with both GObject and GObject-Introspection is
> both extensive and very actively developed. Were we starting now we'd have
> to be nuts to pick Guile over Python.)

If we were starting now we'd probably not be using C at all (and I'd argue
whether or not we should be using gnome/gtk/glib, either).  But alas we
have over a decade of legacy code that's had thousands of man-hours of
work to get us where we are, and it would be a shame to give all that up.

We can play the "what if" games or think about how we could have done
things better if we could start over, but I feel it would be a better use
of our time to look forward instead of looking back.

>
> Regards,
> John Ralls

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant