Seamless operability between C++11 and Python
Go to file
Jason Rhinelander 3f589379ec Improve constructor/destructor tracking
This commit rewrites the examples that look for constructor/destructor
calls to do so via static variable tracking rather than output parsing.

The added ConstructorStats class provides methods to keep track of
constructors and destructors, number of default/copy/move constructors,
and number of copy/move assignments.  It also provides a mechanism for
storing values (e.g. for value construction), and then allows all of
this to be checked at the end of a test by getting the statistics for a
C++ (or python mapping) class.

By not relying on the precise pattern of constructions/destructions,
but rather simply ensuring that every construction is matched with a
destruction on the same object, we ensure that everything that gets
created also gets destroyed as expected.

This replaces all of the various "std::cout << whatever" code in
constructors/destructors with
`print_created(this)`/`print_destroyed(this)`/etc. functions which
provide similar output, but now has a unified format across the
different examples, including a new ### prefix that makes mixed example
output and lifecycle events easier to distinguish.

With this change, relaxed mode is no longer needed, which enables
testing for proper destruction under MSVC, and under any other compiler
that generates code calling extra constructors, or optimizes away any
constructors.  GCC/clang are used as the baseline for move
constructors; the tests are adapted to allow more move constructors to
be evoked (but other types are constructors much have matching counts).

This commit also disables output buffering of tests, as the buffering
sometimes results in C++ output ending up in the middle of python
output (or vice versa), depending on the OS/python version.
2016-08-11 18:16:04 -04:00
docs Implement reference_internal with a keep_alive 2016-08-10 12:08:04 -04:00
example Improve constructor/destructor tracking 2016-08-11 18:16:04 -04:00
include/pybind11 Silence MSVC warning 2016-08-11 16:23:23 -04:00
pybind11 starting to work on release v1.9 2016-06-14 15:24:47 +02:00
tools Fixed finding python libraries on windows in venv 2016-08-08 08:31:08 +02:00
.appveyor.yml Improve CI test coverage: eigen, numpy and C++14 2016-07-30 17:18:33 +02:00
.gitignore minor .gitignore update 2016-06-14 15:25:53 +02:00
.gitmodules Documentation extraction tool 2015-07-22 01:05:41 +02:00
.travis.yml Use system version of Python 2.7 on OS X on Travis 2016-08-02 01:19:19 +02:00
CMakeLists.txt minor cmake change as per #306 2016-08-02 02:19:35 +02:00
CONTRIBUTING.md added a CONTRIBUTING.md file for the GitHub issue tracker 2016-04-14 21:42:55 +02:00
LICENSE documentation updates 2016-04-29 10:06:24 +02:00
MANIFEST.in Add a conda recipe for pybind11 2016-03-01 08:57:32 -05:00
README.md minor README.md fix 2016-07-12 16:58:55 +02:00
setup.cfg PyPI setup.py file; v1.0 release 2015-10-15 22:21:50 +02:00
setup.py stl_bind redesign & cleanup pass 2016-05-16 12:12:58 +02:00

pybind11 logo

pybind11 — Seamless operability between C++11 and Python

Documentation Status Build Status Build status

pybind11 is a lightweight header-only library that exposes C++ types in Python and vice versa, mainly to create Python bindings of existing C++ code. Its goals and syntax are similar to the excellent Boost.Python library by David Abrahams: to minimize boilerplate code in traditional extension modules by inferring type information using compile-time introspection.

The main issue with Boost.Python—and the reason for creating such a similar project—is Boost. Boost is an enormously large and complex suite of utility libraries that works with almost every C++ compiler in existence. This compatibility has its cost: arcane template tricks and workarounds are necessary to support the oldest and buggiest of compiler specimens. Now that C++11-compatible compilers are widely available, this heavy machinery has become an excessively large and unnecessary dependency.

Think of this library as a tiny self-contained version of Boost.Python with everything stripped away that isn't relevant for binding generation. Without comments, the core header files only require ~2.5K lines of code and depend on Python (2.7 or 3.x) and the C++ standard library. This compact implementation was possible thanks to some of the new C++11 language features (specifically: tuples, lambda functions and variadic templates). Since its creation, this library has grown beyond Boost.Python in many ways, leading to dramatically simpler binding code in many common situations.

Tutorial and reference documentation is provided at http://pybind11.readthedocs.org/en/latest. A PDF version of the manual is available here.

Core features

pybind11 can map the following core C++ features to Python

  • Functions accepting and returning custom data structures per value, reference, or pointer
  • Instance methods and static methods
  • Overloaded functions
  • Instance attributes and static attributes
  • Arbitrary exception types
  • Enumerations
  • Callbacks
  • Custom operators
  • STL data structures
  • Iterators and ranges
  • Smart pointers with reference counting like std::shared_ptr
  • Internal references with correct reference counting
  • C++ classes with virtual (and pure virtual) methods can be extended in Python

Goodies

In addition to the core functionality, pybind11 provides some extra goodies:

  • pybind11 uses C++11 move constructors and move assignment operators whenever possible to efficiently transfer custom data types.

  • It is possible to bind C++11 lambda functions with captured variables. The lambda capture data is stored inside the resulting Python function object.

  • It's easy to expose the internal storage of custom data types through Pythons' buffer protocols. This is handy e.g. for fast conversion between C++ matrix classes like Eigen and NumPy without expensive copy operations.

  • pybind11 can automatically vectorize functions so that they are transparently applied to all entries of one or more NumPy array arguments.

  • Python's slice-based access and assignment operations can be supported with just a few lines of code.

  • Everything is contained in just a few header files; there is no need to link against any additional libraries.

  • Binaries are generally smaller by a factor of 2 or more compared to equivalent bindings generated by Boost.Python.

  • When supported by the compiler, two new C++14 features (relaxed constexpr and return value deduction) are used to precompute function signatures at compile time, leading to smaller binaries.

  • With little extra effort, C++ types can be pickled and unpickled similar to regular Python objects.

Supported compilers

  1. Clang/LLVM (any non-ancient version with C++11 support)
  2. GCC (any non-ancient version with C++11 support)
  3. Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or newer
  4. Intel C++ compiler 16 or newer (15 with a workaround)
  5. Cygwin/GCC (tested on 2.5.1)

About

This project was created by Wenzel Jakob. Significant features and/or improvements to the code were contributed by Jonas Adler, Sylvain Corlay, Axel Huebl, @hulucc, Sergey Lyskov Johan Mabille, Tomasz Miąsko, Dean Moldovan, Ben Pritchard, Boris Schäling, and Pim Schellart.

License

pybind11 is provided under a BSD-style license that can be found in the LICENSE file. By using, distributing, or contributing to this project, you agree to the terms and conditions of this license.