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| SWIG | |
|---|---|
| Original author | David M. Beazley |
| Developer | SWIG developers |
| Initial release | February 1996; 30 years ago (1996-02)[1] |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C,C++ |
| License | GPLv3 |
| Website | swig |
| Repository | |
TheSimplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) is anopen-source software tool used to connectcomputer programs orlibraries written inC orC++ withscripting languages such asLua,Perl,PHP,Python,R,Ruby,Tcl, and other language implementations likeC#,Java,JavaScript,Go,D,OCaml,Octave,Scilab andScheme. Output can also be in the form ofXML.
The aim is to allow the calling of native functions (that were written in C or C++) by other programming languages, passing complex data types to those functions, keeping memory from being inappropriately freed, inheriting object classes across languages, etc. The programmer writes an interface file containing a list of C/C++ functions to be made visible to an interpreter. SWIG will compile the interface file and generate code in regular C/C++ and the target programming language. SWIG will generateconversion code for functions with simple arguments; conversion code for complex types of arguments must be written by the programmer. The SWIG tool createssource code that provides the glue between C/C++ and the target language. Depending on the language, this glue comes in three forms:
SWIG is not used for calling interpreted functions by native code; this must be done by the programmer manually.
SWIG wraps simple C declarations by creating an interface that closely matches the way in which the declarations would be used in a C program. For example, consider the following interface file:[4]
%moduleexample%inline%{externdoublesin(doublex);externintstrcmp(constchar*,constchar*);externintFoo;%}#define STATUS 50#define VERSION "1.1"
In this file, there are two functionssin() andstrcmp(), a global variableFoo, and two constantsSTATUS andVERSION. When SWIG creates an extension module, these declarations are accessible as scripting language functions, variables, and constants respectively. In Python:
>>>example.sin(3)0.141120008>>>example.strcmp("Dave","Mike")-1>>>print(example.cvar.Foo)42>>>print(example.STATUS)50>>>print(example.VERSION)1.1
There are two main reasons to embed ascripting engine in an existing C/C++ program:
There are several reasons to create dynamic libraries that can be loaded into extant interpreters, including:
SWIG is written in C and C++ and has been publicly available since February 1996. The initial author and main developer wasDavid M. Beazley who developed SWIG while working as a graduate student atLos Alamos National Laboratory and theUniversity of Utah and while on the faculty at theUniversity of Chicago. Development is currently supported by an active group of volunteers led by William Fulton. SWIG has been released under aGNU General Public License.
SWIG was a successful participant ofGoogle Summer of Code in 2008, 2009, 2012. In 2008, SWIG got four slots. Haoyu Bai spent his summers on SWIG's Python 3.0 Backend, Jan Jezabek worked on Support for generatingCOM wrappers, Cheryl Foil spent her time on Comment 'Translator' for SWIG, and Maciej Drwal worked on a C backend.In 2009, SWIG again participated in Google Summer of Code. This time four students participated. Baozeng Ding worked on aScilab module. Matevz Jekovec spent time onC++0x features. Ashish Sharma spent his summer on anObjective-C module, Miklos Vajna spent his time on PHP directors.
In 2012, SWIG participated in Google Summer of Code. This time four out of five students successfully completed the project. Leif Middelschulte worked on a C target language module. Swati Sharma enhanced the Objective-C module. Neha Narang added the new module on JavaScript. Dmitry Kabak worked on source code documentation andDoxygen comments.
For Python, similar functionality is offered bySIP, Pybind11, andBoost's Boost.python library.
