[vtk-developers] Improvements to the Python wrapping in VTK

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 1:51 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Marcus D. Hanwell
> <marcus.hanwell at kitware.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 1:34 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Marcus D. Hanwell
>>> <marcus.hanwell at kitware.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> That sounds great - I will make that move (and agree on reducing
>>>> moves). My final question if you look at the patch is on the right way
>>>> to handle vtkType.h and friends - should they just be marked as
>>>> WRAP_SPECIAL, should we do something different with WRAP_HEADER (which
>>>> is currently going into the classes file).
>>>
>>> I want to export all python-wrappable files, including vtkType.h.  But
>>> there is no vtkCommonCore-Headers.cmake, so I don't know where to put
>>> vtkType.h except in vtkCommonCore-Classes.cmake, which is a poor fit.
>>>
>>> The main purpose of both WRAP_HEADER and WRAP_SPECIAL is
>>> just to wrap files in python that don't get wrapped in tcl or java.  The
>>> WRAP_HEADER is just for wrapping headers that aren't already in the
>>> class list.  So of course I'd like for WRAP_HEADER headers to be
>>> exported, but really I'd prefer to export all non-class headers
>>> anyway.
>>>
>>> Since I never extended the "special" wrapping to the java and tcl
>>> wrappers (and almost certainly won't) maybe a WRAP_PYTHON
>>> should replace both WRAP_HEADER and WRAP_SPECIAL.
>>>
>> I feel like if WRAP_SPECIAL is simply ignored by the other wrapped
>> languages keeping that name seems reasonable. If we want to extend
>> either one (or another language in the future) then we can use
>> WRAP_SPECIAL as an extended set of files that your wrapper must
>> support and get rid of WRAP_HEADER entirely. It seems to me like they
>> belong in the -Classes file, but perhaps that name could be a little
>> more general (-Headers as we only really care about headers for
>> wrapping?)
>
> I'd also prefer -Headers over -Classes.  A complete list of
> every header file that is part of the install, along with a list
> of properties.
>
I am just working on cleaning this topic up. I noticed that since
moving the vtkWrappingPython module three Python tests are now
failing,

http://open.cdash.org/viewTest.php?onlyfailed&buildid=2842500

It seems that there is some hardwired logic I am not aware of - any
ideas? This is the test string, templates and variants so it all fits
that the special code is being missed somehow.

Thanks,

Marcus