> I am interested in helping with the auto creation of the typelib file.
Excellent! Sadly, google can't seem to find my earlier posts on this topic.
Many years ago I posted sample code that could create a typelib from
pure-python.
>
> On 7/25/07, Rasjid Wilcox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > As for helping with the auto-create idea, what kind of experience is
> > needed, and do we have any idea of how much work is involved?
>
> Based on my reading so far, it seems that what is required is the
> auto-generation of the appropriate IDL file, which can then be
> compiled into a TLB file using the standard Microsoft MIDL compiler.
> It would appear to me that the creation of the IDL file could be done
> entirely in Python, without a deep knowledge of C being required.
> Have I missed something? Is it more complex than this?
There should be no need to create an IDL file - enough interfaces are
exposed so that we can create the typelib directly.
The problem I see is how to infer the intent of the Python programmer, who
probably does *not* want to author the interfaces externally. In other
words, the typelib should be able to be created only from information inside
the .py file.
class MyCOMObject:
...
def Foo(self, bar):
return "foo"
Somehow we need to allow this to be annotated so that the programmer can say
"bar must be a string, and the result must be a string".
Last I thought about this, Python 'decorators' were just a gleam in
someone's eye, so they may offer a solution. Ideally, we would look at
tools like pyrex which may already have grown ways to annotate types of
things it deals with.
Another (easier) issue is to decide on the semantics for creation of the
typelib - eg, do we force the programmer to nominate the typelib GUID, and
any version annotations necessary? How hard do we try to stop them shooting
themselves in the foot by, for example, changing method signatures without
chaning the version or GUID? etc.
> My employer would be interested in getting this working as long as the
> amount of work involved is measured in weeks and not months, as would
> provide a clean way to migrate vb6 apps to Python in an incremental
> manner.
That sounds great! As implied above, I don't think the major problems will
be related to the actual creation of the typelib, but instead in determining
what to populate it with. If the "obviously correct" answer was apparent
today (along with code that could extract this info), I'd expect it could be
done in a matter of days.
Cheers,
Mark
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