使用SWIG包装octave的C ++ API

Question

What is the best way to wrap octave's C++ API using SWIG?

All I would need would be the interface file (something like wrap_octave.i), which could be used to generate wrappers for another language (D in my case, but it shouldn't matter).

I can get wrap individual functions by writing them explicitly in the interface file but this is laborious. If I %include header files in the interface file it is not clear which ones to include without generating compiler errors. NOTE: the target language for the wrapper is NOT octave; instead I want to use embedded octave in another language via the C++ api.

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure what you want, but SWIG doesn't offer easy shortcuts like "don't wrap anything that isn't supported". It doesn't %include recursively, which is generally good to avoid wrapping stuff you don't want, but it means you need to manage the %include order manually. If you provide dependencies in the wrong order, SWIG may generate incorrect code without emitting error or warning messages.

In my library I have control of the header files, so I can easily exclude stuff I don't want, eg

#ifdef SWIG
#define INTERNAL protected
#else
#define INTERNAL public
#endif

class Foo {
public:
    void Bar();
INTERNAL: // hide from SWIG
    void Baz();
};

So one option is to duplicate the headers and modify them until they are suitable for SWIG, or just strip out everything you don't want to wrap. In many cases you can also %include the headers unmodified, and %ignore the classes and functions you don't want.

If you want special treatment for some data types, expect to get your hands dirty with typemaps.