Boost/Python

[John Ralls]

> On Jan 10, 2018, at 7:49 AM, cicko <alen.siljak at gmx.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks a lot, John! 
> I'll read more into this. I'd hope for some sort of wrapper on top of the
> already compiled binaries. Was hoping that these Python interfaces would do
> something like that. Which makes me wonder why the bindings currently don't
> work on Windows. I don't know much about the inner workings of this part at
> all.
> 
> The ability to read c/c++ dlls directly from c# makes it another interesting
> multi-platform option. It's supposed to work well on Linux by now. I might
> explore that route into more details over the weekend. 
> I tried it before but the thought of rewriting the data access layer threw
> me off a bit and Python seemed like an easier approach for a hobby project,
> considering there is PyCash, which provides the complete GnuCash data model. 
> Now that direct access to GnuCash libraries looks possible, I might tap
> directly into the real engine and, for example, get the list of scheduled
> transactions with next due dates, instead of writing a parallel logic for
> this elsewhere.
> 
> Hopefully this turns out to provide enough access to create some sort of
> prototype (.net is my main professional development platform, btw). Then it
> would be a fairly simple thing of exposing it over HTTP endpoint, which is
> what some have been asking for on the lists. I'd also prefer a HTTP UI as it
> also opens the door to mobile apps as well.
> 
> 

The bindings may work on Windows. They do work on MacOS, but we don’t include them in either AIO because they need to link libpython and so will work with only a single python version. Apple ships a different python version with each version of MacOS and Microsoft doesn’t provide python at all so it’s up to the user who wants python to install it. Since the interpreter and the GnuCash bindings have to link the same libpython that creates a problem for an AIO. 

You can install the python of your choice on Windows and build GnuCash from source with the python bindings enabled. We don’t test that so I can’t be sure that it will work.

Regards,
John Ralls