[PyKDE] Re: Issues using SIP for small C++ classes

[Giovanni Bajo]

Phil Thompson wrote:

> The short answer is that there is nothing that can be done in the
> short term.

I see.

> Note that Pyrex, as you describe, is not wrapping C++ classes - it is
> creating Python equivalents of C++ classes (or do I mean C structs?).
> I'm not sure how you would represent any class methods - and I don't
> see how they could work anyway.

I don't know what you mean here: I'm sure you know that you can fully define
classes in Pyrex (with methods, etc.); in fact, I have two fully-equivalent
implementations of the class P, with operators etc. (one in Pyrex, one in
SIP/C++), to run benchmarks. In the part in which I was speaking of how the
Pyrex code was accessing P's members (x & y), I was just noticing that it
did not need any "getter" function, and was able to expose to the Python
interpreter the actual member.

> I think that the objects you could emulate would be so lightweight
> that I wouldn't even bother with C++ in the first place - unless
> space is the showstopper.

In fact, in the same library, there are more important and complex
classes/functions built *upon* P, which fully require C++ and SIP. But I was
surprised of how large was the overhead of SIP for the leaf lightweight
classes such as P.

Pyrex has its problems too: it works better for these lightweight classes,
but you can't really write Pyrex class (say, X) built upon another Pyrex
class (say P): that is, you can, but the generated code of X will use P
through the full Python API, so losing all speed. Basically, Pyrex is able
to write optimized (=fast as C) classes which use C/C++ builtin types (int,
float, ecc.), but these optimized classes can't be transitively used to
build other optimized classes.

I just reduced the SIP memory allocation overhead by redefining operator new
for the classes and using PyMalloc (but this is only possible because I own
the C++ library...). Some speed got back, but it's still somewhere like 50%
slower than the Pyrex solution in real-world benchmarks. I'll see what
happens when everything is finished, but looks like I'll have to leave with
two different P implementations (one in Pyrex to be used from Python, and
one in C++ to be used as basis for other classes).
-- 
Giovanni Bajo