Re: [Boost-build] jam/python function calling

Subject: Re: [Boost-build] jam/python function calling
From: Steven Watanabe (watanabesj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-14 11:09:20

AMDG

Vladimir Prus wrote:
> It turns out that bjam is a little bit too flexible with types, which causes some pain.
> Support Jamfile has:
>
> 	import feature ;
> 	feature.feature interpreter : : free incidental ;
>
> The matching function in Python is:
>
> 	def feature (name, values, attributes = []):
>
> The problem is that bjam language has list of strings as the only data
> type, and Python does not have type declaration. So, given the above,
> current Python port passes 3 values of type 'list of string' to Python,
> and when we try to use 'name' as string, things fall apart. Of course,
> I can hack 'feature' to operate on name[0], but this seems, ehm, nasty.
>
> So far, the best approach I came up is:
>
> 	@interop([1, 0, 0])
> 	def feature (name, values, attributes = []):
>
> where parameters to the 'interop' decorator mean that first argument
> passed from bjam should be a list of 1 string and be converted to a string,
> while two other parameters should be list of strings of any size, and
> left unchanged. Things are getting nasty for the toolset.flags rule, though:
>
> 	rule flags (
>     	rule-or-module
>     	variable-name
>     	condition * :
>
> Where the first paramter from bjam should be unpackad into 3 parameters to
> python code. But presumably, this case can be handled by a custom code.
>
> It seems like adding such annotation will be a bit of work. Does anybody
> have brighter ideas on the syntax, or how to avoid this mess?
>   

Python supports tuples in the argument list, so you could use

def feature((name,), values, attributes = []):
    print name
    print values
    print attributes

 >>> feature(["interpreter"], [], ["free", "incidental"])
interpreter
[]
['free', 'incidental']

However, I can't see how to adapt this for flags.
Also, this forces python code to use the bjam
signatures, which looks rather awkward.

I think that something based on attributes is probably
going to be the best solution.  Maybe something like:

@jam_signature("rule_or_module variable_name condition * : values * : 
unchecked ? : hack_hack ?")
def flags(rule_or_module, variable_name, condition, values, unchecked, 
hack_hack):

In Christ,
Steven Watanabe