[Python-Dev] Changing Clinic's output

[Zachary Ware]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
> I will consider you a +1 on the "buffer" approach and NaN on the other
> approaches.

Oops, I'll give you some real numbers:

-1 _pickle.original.c
+1 _pickle.using-buffer.c
+0 _pickle.using-modified-buffer.c
+1  _pickle.using-multiple-buffers.c
+0 _pickle.using-sidefile.c

> That wouldn't be too hard.  But conceptually it would make Clinic much more
> complicated.  For example, I suggest that "later" is a confusing name,
> because the output will actually happen *earlier* in the file.  "If it's
> hard to explain, it may be a bad idea." ;-)

Fair enough :).  "later" makes sense to me as "there's nothing in the
buffer now, but there will be later; dump it here then".  The spark
for this idea is in _winapi.c, where OverlappedObject's methoddef is
actually before any of the methods are implemented which makes a
certain amount of sense as a list of what will be implemented; but as
far as I can tell, it isn't possible to replicate this with Clinic
right now.  Having read the readme in your examples, this could also
help with the chicken-and-egg problem you talked about using the
various buffers: dump docstrings at the top, followed by prototypes,
then methoddef defines near where they're needed (or even perhaps
output them directly into the PyMethodDef structure, no defines
needed).

-- 
Zach