[Cython] CTypes backend for Cython Status

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi Romain,

thanks for the feedback.

Romain Guillebert, 08.09.2011 06:18:
> The Google Summer of Code has ended and I didn't give the current status
> to anyone yet (I was very busy with a report I had to write for my
> university).
>
> There is still work to do on the project (there was more work than I
> expected, especially because of semantic differences between Cython and
> ctypes) so I'll talk about what needs to be done (even if it does not
> sound good compared to talking about what has been done) from the most
> important to the least important in my opinion :
>
> - Pointer vs Array, Cython mixes the two while ctypes does not, this
>    can probably be fixed by using arrays everywhere (if we can convert
>    pointers into arrays)

Could you elaborate on this? Why can't you always use pointers?


> - Take into account header files declared globally

"globally" as in ... ?

And what exactly do you mean by "take header files into account"?


> - Macros, this is probably the biggest part but it's doable, Cython has
>    the types of the arguments and the return value so it's possible to
>    generate a C function corresponding to a macro

Agreed. I think that's the only viable solution. Won't work for all macros, 
but at least for a rather large number of them.


> - Pointer to functions

I take it this isn't implemented at all? Do you mean pointers to Cython 
cdef functions or also to external C defined functions?


> Some of them are trivial, others just require good ideas and macros
> demands a big amount of work.

Really? Apart from generating the rather straight forward wrapper functions 
for them, what else needs to be done?


> I'm still working on it and if someone wants to give a hand, I'll be
> happy to explain what I've done.

Happy to hear that.

Stefan