Re: [Gegl-developer] Returning to python-gegl

[Jon Nordby <jononor gmail com>]

On 12 February 2015 at 06:30, Joao S. O. Bueno <gwidion mpc com br> wrote:

Hi -

after several months I am taking back a look at my Python bindings for GEGL,
which make use of gobject introspection.

The situation with gobject introspection is none but frustrating - maybe
one could use it, if he could live in #gobject on irc - but there seens to be
no documentation resources wherever.

Moreover, it does not work very well,
whenever something is not available using the auto-generated bindings,
there is no workaround, but to make/request changes on the upstream project
and wait for a new release.

That can be seen as a feature, it makes sure fixes go upstream, which makes it work for every language supported by GI - not just with one particular binding.

 

Add to that things that simply stop working
(I just found out I can no longer instantiate a geglBuffer with the gobject
introspection - and the solution in my package is a hack already to workaround
the constructor failing in the past)

Due to bug in GI, or changes in GEGL?

 

Moreover, the latest GEGL stable release is still built with introspection off -
so people can't make use of the Python bindings without rebuildoing
GEGL themselves,
as all distros ship the package without the "gir"  files.

If we have not changed the default go be --with-introspection, we should do that now. But yes, it will only work for GEGL 0.3+

But -- I may be wrong --- people may be firmly committed to gobject
introspection,
and it may be the future, and it is my fault not learning it right -
And this is the main motivation for this message:
Doo anyone believe/think/can explain/ if gobject introspection has a
future at all?

I think if we added testcases for consuming GEGL though Python/GI to upstream GEGL we would catch (& hopefully fix) breakages early. If we include the bindings library you have created in upstream GEGL to provide more Pythonic syntax, we could also add testcases for that. We should then ship it by default I think.

I don't see the GNOME ecosystem switching away from GI anytime soon. And despite the pains (docs, bugs, annotations upstream), I do think the model is better than hand-writing bindings...

 

--

Jon Nordby - www.jonnor.com