[C++-sig] New Major-Release Boost.Python Development

[Jim Bosch]

On 08/26/2011 04:17 AM, Neal Becker wrote:
> What sort of improvements did you have in mind?

My list includes:

- Propagating constness to Python (essentially already done as an 
extension, but it could have a much nicer interface if I could mess with 
class_ itself).

- Make custom registry and template-based conversions more accessible. 
The former may just need more documentation, but the rvalue converters 
in particular don't seem to have been intended as part of the public API 
originally, and I think they're an important part of the library. 
Template-based conversions are even more buried in the details - you 
have to specialize five or six classes to get it working.  I'd like to 
make it possible to create a template-based conversion by (partial) 
specializing just one traits class.

- Automatic conversions for newer boost libraries (Fusion, Pointer 
Container, and Filesystem are at the top of my list), and more for the 
STL and iostreams standard libraries.  I'd like to integrate the 
indexing suite (v2) into Boost.Python proper.

- Allow Boost.Python wrapped classes to inherit from Python classes.

- An actual "boost.python" Python module to make exceptions and other 
types used in wrappers easily accessible from Python.

- Some limited degree of priority-based overload matching.  Not sure how 
best to approach this one yet, though.

Jim