[PyQt] SIP: Suggestions for a new major version

[Jens Thoms Toerring]

Hi,

   there are what I feel are a few rough edges to SIP were
I'd be very happy if a new major version would improve on
it.

One of these points is that SIP does balk at some legal C++
syntax. E.g. it doesn't want to understand types like 'long
int', it only accepts 'long' (same for 'short int').

And then SIP insists on the 'const' qualifier coming before
the type name and complains about "invalid syntax" when you
have it the other way round. E.g. it accepts 'const char *'
but not 'char const *'.

Our in-house coding standard requests using in C++ just the
forms that SIP doesn't like (the "type name first and const
qualifier afterwards" is straight from the C++ FAQ). So there
is quite a bit of menial work when converting C++ header files
into a .sip files that perhaps could be avoided.

Would it be a lot of work to make SIP accept alternative
(but legal) C++ syntax? I would be quite willing to spend
a bit of time on trying to get that implemented but I would
need some pointers to were to start looking since I haven't
spend a lot of time yet going through the SIP source code.

Another problem I have run into quite often is error messages
of the form

sip: xxx::yyy() has overloaded functions with the same Python signature

While I'm aware that Python's type system is quite different
from C++'s that always gives me a sinking feeling since I know
that finding the offending line(s) will cost me lots of time.
While I may have overlooked something in the documentation and
thus haven't yet groked the rules of what exactly are functions
"with the same Python signature" (I once thought I had got a
handle on it but then the next case squashed that hope;-), that
there are no line number in the error message to give me a star-
ting point on where to look also doesn't help too much;-) The
only way to find the offending lines I have at the moment is to
comment out lots of stuff in the .sip file, retry, uncomment a
few lines, try again etc. until SIP finally is satisfied. That
works but is rather time consuming and then I'm not really happy
when I don't understand what I'm doing and have to rely on trial-
and-error...
                            Best regards, Jens
-- 
  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ________      jt at toerring.de
   \_______________________________      http://toerring.de