Sunday, September 23, 2007

JPype is alive! kinda ....

Despite a few false starts, I am still working on JPype. I haver recently undertaken to rewrite it again.

Last year was a major false start. The architectural goal of writing less C++ landed writing just as much (in glue code), but also write a lot more of glue java and python code. Best forgotten.

This time around, I decided to tackle the main issue first. So after doing minimal work on general class support, I tackled what I set out to do all those years ago : subclassing.

As of this writing, it works! With a few restrictions, it is possible to extend a java class in python, pass an instance of it to java code and have the java code call the python methods! Hurray!!!

With this release, I have also decided to get serious about multiple host language support. To this end, the main package has been renamed to JEmbed. It has a completely new API geared towards the new functionality.

JPype will continue to exist. My goal is to re-implement the JPype API on top of JEmbed such that existing programs will continue to work as-is.

I am also going to try an open approach to the progress. All the main tasks are listed on t he sourceforge project (JEmbed and JPype ). As things progress, I will add tasks there, and track their completion.

If anywone sees anything missing from there, or have requests to make, let me know! please open a feature request on the site ( http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=109824&atid=655015 )

Thats it for now.