[PySide] PySide - Qt5 - Swig

[Fabien Castan]

> Are people from Shiboken not interested to work on Swig? Why?
>> I see the reason to eliminate boost python. Is there a reason to
>> eliminate Swig?
>>
> I guess the same reason applies.
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20120311172636/http://www.pyside.org/docs/shiboken/faq.html
>

The sentence is: "The main reason was the size reduction. Boost.Python
makes excessive use of templates resulting in a significant increase of the
binaries size. On the other hand, as Shiboken generates CPython code, the
resulting binaries are smaller."
But Swig use CPython too... so I don't see the difference with Shiboken on
the principle.

One of the reasons to switch to Python is to continue generating docs like
> that. SWIG will never be able to generate something like this, and it would
> be nice to make generated HTML available again. GitHub or Google Code
> should do this.
>
I don't see the point. Using the rst format and tools like sphinx is a
great thing.
It doesn't depend on the binding tool and you don't need to write your
application in python to use it.
readthedocs.org is a great solution to maintain it automatically.

Another reason. You said you're able to generate Swig rules from the .xml
> files of Shiboken. Can you do the reverse?
>
Sure an xml is easier to parse from a script than Swig rules. But on the
other hand, it's far more human readable than xml!
>From my point of view, xml is really not a good argument...
Writing such code is not very pleasant:
<rejection class="*"
function-name="qobject_interface_iid<QTextCodecFactoryInterface*>"/>

Having 4058 lines of xml in one file for all QtCore... is not
very comfortable too.
I have some difficulties to see this, as the best solution for an ideal
future. Even if the tool that parse it is written in python.

Sure it's easier to parse an HTML file than an RST file... but people
prefer to deal with RST to write their documentation.

Why not to bring expertise to Boost then?
>
Because in Boost Python, the principle is wrong. Using templates to creates
a binding to a script language is a strange idea...
I don't see many project using Boost Python. I don't see any project using
Shiboken.
But I see a lot of projects using Swig. It should be a reason, no?
Oops... It seems that I lose my objective to not hurt anybody... ;)

You again ignore the Py. side of the arguments. In Python world ctypes is
> way more popular, because it doesn't require compilation and binary blobs.
> I'd look into CFFI if you really want to move new technology.
>
I don't know what is the best way to bind a language to another. I have
no experience on that, but it seems really interesting.
Maybe you could discuss with Swig guys. I'm sure they are interested by the
subject...
You are both open source, so there is no real concurrency like in
commercial software. That's the power of open source!

We all want Qt5 in Python, but in pythonic ways.
>
Yes, but if you need to rewrite the binding tool in python before starting
conversion rules... with nobody in full-time job...
How could this be achieved?

I'm surprised that you are not interested to check existing solutions,
before starting to *REWRITE* Shiboken in python.
Swig is the most widely used binding tool... maybe you could test it before?
We do something that could be considered as a prototype of that, but if you
are not interested at all...
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