[Xapian-devel] [GSoC 2011] Improving Existing Bindings JAVA

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 07:59:09PM +0100, Pouyan Zachar wrote:
> I am interested in getting involved in "improving existing bindings"
> for Java. I have reviewed the documentation and already installed
> Xapian (all available packages for Ubuntu 10.10). I have also read the
> TODO list available under
> http://svn.xapian.org/trunk/xapian-bindings/java/README?revision=HEAD.
> SWIG has also been checked.
> 
> I wanted to know if it is desired to replace JNI approach with SWIG or
> only to improve it in a more Java manner?

We want to replace the hand-coded JNI version with a SWIG based one.

There's some initial work on this in the java-swig subdirectory -
this works to some extent, but it's not yet a suitable replacement for
the JNI bindings.  And there's work to do to make the bindings more
"Java-like".

> moreover I wanted know are there any other important "unmentioned"
> aspects which should be considered before applying?

This project is perhaps on the small side by itself, though how long it
is likely to take obviously depends a lot on the skills and experience
you have going in to it.

So it might be good to think of ways to expand it a bit.

If you are familiar with C# too, you could expand it to include work on
the C# bindings too - SWIG's support for Java and C# has a lot in
common, and the C# bindings are working already, so the additional work
would be less than it might at first seem.

Cheers,
    Olly