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[wxWidgets.git] / wxPython / wxSWIG / README

SWIG (Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator)
Version 1.1 (Maintenance)

Copyright (C) 1995-1999
University of Utah and the Regents of the University of California

August 8, 1999

1. Introduction
---------------
SWIG is a compiler that attempts to make it easy to integrate C, C++,
or Objective-C code with scripting languages including Perl, Tcl, and
Python.  In a nutshell, you give it a bunch of ANSI C/C++ declarations
and it generates an interface between C and your favorite scripting
language.  However, this is only scratching the surface of what SWIG
can do--some of its more advanced features include automatic
documentation generation, module and library management, extensive
customization options, and more.

SWIG is entirely the product of users who have used the system and
suggested new ideas.  There are far too many people to thank
individually, but without this support, SWIG would be not be nearly as
powerful or fun to use as it is now. Many thanks!

2.   Currently Supported Languages
----------------------------------

To use SWIG, you will need at least one of the following scripting
languages :

        Tcl7.3, Tk3.6  (and all newer versions)
	Tcl8.0, Tk8.0  (somewhat experimental)
        Python1.3 (or newer)
        Perl5.003 (or newer)
	Perl4
	FSF Guile 1.0 (experimental)

If you don't have any of these, SWIG will still compile, but it won't
be particularly useful.  Note : it is not necessary to have *all* of
these languages installed to use SWIG--only the scripting languages you
want to use.

3.   Installation (Unix)
------------------------

To compile and use SWIG, you will need the following on your machine:

        A C++ compiler  (ie. g++)
        An ANSI C compiler (ie. gcc)
        yacc or bison (only needed if you are going to rebuild the SWIG parser)

To compile and install SWIG, type the following :

        ./configure
        make
	make runtime      (optional. see below)
        make install

The configuration script will attempt to locate various packages on
your machine, including Tcl, Perl5, and Python.   Don't panic if
you get 'not found' messages--SWIG does not need these packages
to compile or run.   The configure script is actually looking for 
these packages so that you can try out the SWIG examples contained
in the 'Examples' directory without having to hack Makefiles.
See the Examples section below for more details. 

The 'make runtime' option is an optional step that can be used to
build the SWIG runtime libraries.  These libraries are only used with
larger packages and are not necessary for learning SWIG or trying
the examples (please refer to the "Advanced topics" section of the
SWIG Users manual for more details about this).

Typing 'make test' will run a rather extensive series of tests
and can be run before running 'make install' (if you are paranoid).

There are a number of configuration options that you can give to
'configure' :

        --prefix=/usr/local     

          Set the installation prefix.  SWIG installs into
          /usr/local by default.

        --exec_prefix=/usr/local

          Set the prefix used to install platform specific
          files (binaries and libraries).  Use this if the
          location is different than that given with --prefix.

        --with-lang={TCL,TCL8,PYTHON,PERL5,PERL4,GUILE}

          This lets you choose the default SWIG target language.
          By default, SWIG chooses TCL, but you can select
          another as shown :

                ./configure --with-lang=PYTHON

        --with-doc={ASCII,LATEX,HTML,NODOC}

          This lets you choose the default SWIG documentation
          method.  By default, SWIG chooses ASCII.


4.   Site specific installation
-------------------------------

While not required for compiling SWIG, the configuration script looks
for various packages in order to create a makefile for compiling the
examples.  This makefile is also installed with the SWIG package.
The following configuration options can be used to set the location
of various packages.

--with-tcl=pathname          - Set root directory of Tcl installation.
                               SWIG will use $pathname/include and
                               $pathname/lib.

--with-tclincl=pathname      - Set exact location of Tcl include files

--with-tcllib=pathname       - Set exact location of Tcl library files

--with-itcl=pathname         - Same as above but for [incr Tcl]

--with-itclincl=pathname     - Location of [incr Tcl] include files

--with-itcllib=pathname      - Location of [incr Tcl] libraries

--with-py=pathname           - Set package location of Python. This is usually
                               something like /usr/local.  configure will attempt
                               to locate the appropriate include and library files.

--with-pyincl=pathname       - Set location of Python include files 
                               (for example, /usr/local/include)

--with-pylib=pathname        - Set location of Python library files
                               (for example, /usr/local/lib)

--with-perl5=executable      - Specify your perl5 executable.  SWIG will figure
                               out where files are by running this version of 
                               Perl and grabbing its configuration data.


Other options :

--without-yacc               - Try to compile SWIG using a pregenerated YACC
                               file generated by Berkeley YACC (byacc). Only recommended
                               if you get compiler errors when trying to compile parser.y
                               or parser.cxx.

Changing the C++ compiler:

By default, SWIG will look for g++.  You can change the C++ compile as follows :

        env CXX=CC configure --prefix=/usr/local ... etc...

   or

        setenv CXX=CC
        ./configure ... etc ...

SWIG has been successfully compiled and tested under g++, the SGI C++
compiler, and the SunPro C++ compiler.  

5.  Testing
-----------
The SWIG parser and language modules can be tested by typing 'make test'.
Be forewarned, this runs a large collection of tests on all of SWIG's
language modules and documentation methods.  The tests may take 5-10
minutes to run, but a report of errors will be written to 'test.log'.
If this exists, it will contain error messages for failed tests. If
the file is missing, it means all tests were considered successful.

The testing process requires approximately 30-40 Mbytes of disk space.
After testing, you may wish to type 'make testclean' which will
return the testing directory to its original state.

Note : The testing procedure requires both 'sh' and 'perl'.  If you
don't have these installed, some of the tests won't work.

6. Installation for Windows 95 and NT
-------------------------------------

The Win directory contains makefiles for Microsoft Visual C++ 4.x/5.x and
Borland C++.  See the README.txt file in the Win directory for specific
build instructions.  Many thanks to Kevin Butler (butler@cs.byu.edu)
and Pier Giorgio Esposito for supplying these Makefiles.

7. Installation for Macintosh
-----------------------------

A Macintosh version of SWIG is available separately as a PowerPC
executable.  A source version is also available, but is somewhat
complicated to build due to dependencies on other packages 
including Tcl 8.0.   Please refer to the SWIG homepage for more
information.

8.  Examples
------------

The 'Examples' directory contains examples for all of the supported
scripting languages. All of the examples rely on the file
'Makefile.template' located in the top-level directory.  This makefile
is created by 'configure', but the configuration process is not
foolproof.  To check this Makefile type

      make testbuild

This will attempt to build various kinds of extensions and report its
success or failure.  If this fails, you may need to edit the file
'Makefile.template' by hand.  This usually isn't difficult--just
follow the instructions contained within the file.  Once the 'make
testbuild' works for the language you are interested in using, you
should be able to build the examples.

The examples will not compile properly if you have not installed SWIG.
If you would like to try the examples before installation, set the
SWIG_LIB environment variable as follows :

      setenv SWIG_LIB ${pathname}/SWIG1.1/swig_lib

Where ${pathname} the location of the SWIG source.

*** NOTE *** If you are replacing an older version of SWIG with a new
one, the examples may not compile correctly unless you set the
above environment variable or do a 'make install' first.

9.   Resources
--------------

Up-to-date SWIG related information can be found at

        http://www.swig.org

SWIG source code and software updates are also available via anonymous
ftp at

        ftp://ftp.swig.org


You can join the SWIG mailing list by going to the following location:

        http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/swig 

The SWIG mailing list is a forum for discussing various applications
of SWIG, installation problems, ideas for system improvements and
future work.

*** NEWSFLASH ***  SWIG development has moved to the Univerity of
Chicago.  Developer information can be found at 

        http://swig.cs.uchicago.edu

10.  Installation Problems
-------------------------

As far as I know the installation works on the following platforms :

        - SunOS 4.1.3
        - Solaris
        - Irix 5.3
        - Irix 6.2
        - HPUX
        - AIX 4.1
        - Linux
        - MkLinux
        - MachTen
        - UNICOS
        - Windows 95
        - Windows NT 4.0
        - MacOS System 7.5.3

SWIG development takes place primarily on Linux and Solaris 2.6.  I've
tested most of the examples on these platforms.  I have also tested
SWIG under Win95 and MacOS, but that is still somewhat experimental.

If you've tried everything and can't get SWIG to compile, please send
me e-mail at beazley@cs.uchicago.edu, and we'll try to figure it out.
I try to answer all e-mail that I receive.  However, occasionally I
receive messages with bad return addresses and can't respond.  If you
don't hear back within a few days, try sending a message to
'swig@cs.uchicago.edu'.

11.  Documentation
-----------------

Over 300 pages of documentation describing almost every aspect of SWIG
is available in the Doc directory.  Don't let the amount of
documentation scare you--SWIG is easy enough to use that you can
probably start using it by only looking at a few simple examples.
However, at some point you will probably want to know more so I hope
that the manual will come in useful.  Besides, I hate black boxes...

The documentation is distributed in Adobe PDF format and can be viewed
using the Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Acrobat is available for virtually
all machines and can be freely obtained from Adobe at www.adobe.com.
Postscript and HTML versions of the manual are also available from the
SWIG FTP site.

12.  Incompatibilities
---------------------

This release should be mostly compatible with SWIG 1.0
(Final). However, the SWIG documentation system has been completely
rewritten and the C API has been changed greatly.  It is unlikely that
any custom SWIG language modules written in C++ for 1.0 will work with
1.1.  While porting to 1.1 is not that difficult, there are a number
of important changes.  See the file 'Doc/Porting' for a list of
changes to the C++ API and how to convert an older SWIG module to work
with 1.1.

13.  Bug Reports
----------------

Bug reports should be submitted to the online bug-tracking system
which is available at :

   http://swig.cs.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/swig

Before submitting a bug, please check this site to see if it has
already been reported.  If not, provide as much information as
possible including the SWIG version number, operating system, and
compiler being used.  Note : I tend to fix bugs in batches and may
only respond to a bug report when it has actually been fixed---posting
to the mailing list is often a better way to get an immediate response
to a problem.

14.  Legal Stuff
---------------
SWIG is completely free and non-proprietary.  You can do whatever you
want with it (including distribution), provided that you follow these
rules, 1) Keep all of the copyright notices intact, 2) don't claim
that you wrote it, and 3) Don't sue anyone if it breaks.  Otherwise,
have fun.

15.  Disclaimer
----------------

While I believe that SWIG is reasonably stable, I'm always tinkering
with it and trying to make it better.  There may be a few bugs hiding
around so if you experience any problems let me know.  If you think
that SWIG is missing some capability that would be useful to have
have, post a message on the SWIG mailing list.  Most of the previous
suggestions have already been incorporated into this release.

16.  Acknowledgments
---------------------

SWIG would not be possible without the contributions of people who
tried out the beta versions and offered feedback and bug reports.
While there are far too many people to list at point, I'd like to
especially acknowledge the following individuals and organizations
for supporting SWIG and making major contributions :

David Ascher, Erik Bierwagen, Kurtis Bleeker, John Buckman, Kevin
Butler, Pier Giorgio Esposito, David Fletcher, Mark Hammond, Mark
Harrison, Brad Holian, Gary Holt, Chris Johnson, Peter Lomdahl, Mark
Lutz, Chris Myers, Paul Saxe, John Schmidt, Tom Schwaller, Peter-Pike
Sloan, Patrick Tullmann, Larry Virden, Tser-Yuan Yang, Shujia Zhou.

and 

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Cornell Theory Center
University of Utah
The Scientific Computing and Imaging Group (University of Utah)

(My apologies to anyone I missed...)

If you find SWIG to be useful, I'd like to know about it.

Enjoy!

Dave Beazley
Department of Computer Science
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL  60637
beazley@cs.uchicago.edu