Re: Plans for 2.8 - GNOME Managed Language Services?

["Ross McFarland" <rwmcfa1 neces com>]

Murray Cumming said:
> On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 19:15, muppet wrote:
>> [1] i'm speaking here of pygtk's defs files.  i gave a once-over to gtkmm's
>> defs files shortly before giving up on the idea, and have not looked since.
>
> They are basically the same, because we both use h2defs.py. We have
> extra .defs files for enums, properties, signals, and vfuncs, but pygtk
> probably uses runtime introspection for properties and signals instead.
>
> I think you should have used our defs files. They're good. Of course I
> would have liked it if you extended the format to add the extra
> information that you mentioned. But you succeeded anyway.

a lot of the needed extra information can't be found in an automated fashion.
it required reading the api docs, and in some cases (where the docs where
lacking) the code.

we (gtk2-perl) could of hand edited a set of def's files or hand edited the xs
files, it just seemed simplier to go the xs file route. rather than deal with
yet another level of autogeneration when it would require all of the same
work. one that was yet another level away from the final compiled code.

i would really like to see all of the necessary information be bundled with
gtk+ (and friends.) but it would take some thinking/work to get everything in
there in a way that was useful to everyone. we make extensive use of the
signals, properties, flags, and enums information available. if a well done,
full featured introspection system was added for objects, functions, and
methods api doc would become much simplier as well. it would be really nice if
this information included the descriptions (in a language independant fashion,
don't know about that.) it would make apidoc for the bindings simple, and
would be a big help to people trying to develop IDEs.

just thinking out loud,
-rm