On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 15:45 -0500, Ivan Gyurdiev wrote:
> Okay, this patch is being the subject of controversy on IRC, so I wanted
> to continue discussion on-list.
>
> It's an API change in the python bindings only, which converts out-bound
> arrays of objects (port, iface, boolean, etc..) to a PyList, which makes
> them easier to work with, and better integrated with the target
> language. Also, it fixes memory leak of the list structure (otherwise we
> have to expose free() to address that). It eliminates the need for
> get_by_idx functions, which are not really part of the libsemanage API.
>
> Some problems w/ patch - it relies on some internal swig things - like
> the output variable being called result (swig provides $result, but
> that's in python, and I don't want to unpack it). Not sure if that's a
> problem, I'm not sure this t_output_helper business is part of the
> official API either. Also, swig is not very intelligent, and wants all
> the argument names to match (despite the docs saying otherwise).
>
> Joshua doesn't like it..says semanage.i should be portable to other
> languages. However, I like better integration w/ python, so I think in
> that case maybe it makes sense to have several .i files. Also, I'm not
> sure the .i file is language portable right now - what will happen in a
> language that doesn't support an output vector, so adding things to
> result w/ t_output_helper doesn't necessarily make sense?
>
> Also, how do I implement a binding for set_roles()? I want to unpack a
> PyList into a char** array - requires understanding of python in the .i
> file.

Abstractly (while confessing total ignorance of swig), I would agree that we shouldn't cripple the python bindings for libsemanage just to allow a single interface file to be re-useable for other bindings. That said, I'm a little hesitant to merge without greater consensus and FC5 is very close to devel freeze. Not sure what expectations are for stability of python bindings API...

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency


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