halting problem :: PyClutter Reborn

:: ~2 min read

Back when I started hacking on Clutter, the Python bindings were the first thing that I was tasked to write. In order to make them happen, I had to understand the intent of the library, and fix up the API to be binding-friendly. It was another time — a time before introspection made possible to have run-time bindings that automatically acquired support for new API once the underlying shared library changed. I had to learn the CPython API; the code generation utilities that turned C header files into defs files, and defs files into C code; I also had to fix those utilities, whenever they lied about what they did, or whenever they were pretty much ad hoc code supporting GTK+ quirks; and, finally, I had to understand the build system used by PyGTK that ate all this stuff on one end, blended it all, and spat out a Python C module on the other.

For a long while, the Python bindings for Clutter have been based on that particular brand on insanity; people were able to switch to the introspection-based ones and drop PyClutter entirely, but the API was not as nice to use, and you’d be missing out on some niceties provided by both Python and Clutter.

In 2011, Bastian Winkler started porting the whole infrastructure to the overrides mechanism provided by PyGObject; instead of just loading the Clutter introspection data, you’d load a pure Python module that wrapped specific bits of the exposed API, and made it nicer to use.

For various reasons — mostly lack of time on my side and lack of testing — that work has been bitrotting in a branch of the Git repository. Well, no more. The master branch of the PyClutter repository is now providing introspection overrides similar to the ones for GTK+. I also added a bunch of examples, ported from their C equivalent, to show the idiomatic use of Clutter in a Python context.

I’ll probably do a release, but I’d be happy if somebody wanted to pick up the bindings and run with them — I’m not much of a Python programmer myself.

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