[Xapian-devel] GSoC ( Python Bindings )

[Olly Betts]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 12:04:06PM +0100, James Aylett wrote:
> I doubt we'd be comfortable with the idea of replacing a SWIG-based
> binding with a different one without a very robust justification,
> because it would dramatically increase future maintenance costs (and
> since Python is one of our most important languages to support, that
> could prevent our merging in such work). Beyond that, we're looking
> for any and all changes that improve the experience of developing with
> Xapian in Python.

I'd be very resistant to moving to hand-coded bindings for a language
well supported by SWIG.  We've already been there with Java and Perl,
and it just means that new API features don't get wrapped promptly.

If there's another tool which can automate wrapping the simple cases and
help wrap the more complex ones, then I'm happy to consider that.  We
get some minor benefits from using a common tool for several languages,
but a better tool could easily outweigh these.

Cheers,
    Olly