ffi-swig-generator

by Andrea Fazzi
http://kenai.com/projects/ruby-ffi/sources/swig-generator/show

DESCRIPTION:

ffi-swig-generator is a ruby-ffi wrapper code generator that produces ruby-ffi glue code parsing C header files through SWIG.

ffi-swig-generator is able to traverse an XML parse tree generated by the swig command and to produce a ruby-ffi code from it.

ffi-swig-generator is shipped with a command line tool and a rake task that automates the code generation process.

ffi-swig-generator XML capabilities are provided by nokogiri.

FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

  • The program is able to generate:

    • all C native types

    • #define constants

    • typedefs

    • struct, union, array and enum types

    • callbacks (pointers to functions)

  • Naive indentation of the generated code

SYNOPSIS:

From command line:

ffi-gen mylib.xml mylib.rb

From a Rakefile:

require 'ffi-swig-generator'
FFI::Generator::Task.new do |task|
  task.input_fn = 'my_interface_dir/*.i'
  task.output_dir = 'my_output_dir'
end

REQUIREMENTS:

  • rake >= 0.8.3

  • nokogiri >= 1.1.1

  • swig >= 1.3

DOWNLOAD/INSTALL:

Download and install from rubygems:

[sudo] gem install ffi-swig-generator

or clone mercurial repository:

hg clone http://kenai.com/hg/ruby-ffi~swig-generator

EXAMPLES:

See the examples in examples/ folder.

libc.i is an interface file containing some excerpt of libc functions.

wiiuse.i is a fairly complex example of a C header file interface. It reproduces the content of wiiuse.h, the header file of the wiiuse library. wiiuse is a C library that handles the connection with Nintendo Wiimote devices. The interface file is almost a mere copy/paste from the original header file. See [1] for an updated revision of ffi-wiiuse library.

PROJECTS RELATED TO ffi-swig-generator

The generator has been used to generate code for the projects below. Take a look at them to see further usage examples.

  1. github.com/remogatto/ffi-wiiuse/tree/master

  2. github.com/remogatto/ffi-opengl/tree/master

  3. github.com/remogatto/ffi-spidermonkey/tree/master

LICENSE:

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2009 Andrea Fazzi

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.