[Kde-bindings] Adding an mf_attribute flag to MethodFlags in smoke.h

[Richard Dale]

On Monday 12 October 2009 09:37:58 pm Arno Rehn wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 September 2009 18:39:28 Richard Dale wrote:
> > I think it would be useful if we could add a 'mf_attribute' flag to
> >  MethodFlags to denote a setter or getter method that was generated to
> >  access C++ static/member variables:
> >
> >     enum MethodFlags {
> >         mf_static = 0x01,
> >         mf_const = 0x02,
> >         mf_copyctor = 0x04,  // Copy constructor
> >         mf_internal = 0x08,   // For internal use only
> >         mf_enum = 0x10,   // An enum value
> >         mf_ctor = 0x20,
> >         mf_dtor = 0x40,
> >         mf_protected = 0x80,
> >         mf_attribute = 0x100  //  Variable getter/setter method
> >     };
> >
> > I think calling it an 'mf_attribute' instead of 'mf_property' will make
> > it less likely to get it confusesd with a Q_PROPERTY. This would be
> > useful for languages like python where we want them to be able to make
> > these methods map onto attribute accessors instead of ordinary method
> > calls.
> 
> I thought about creating a new C# sources generator that is directly based
>  on existing smoke libs. Your proposal would be needed for such a thing
>  anyway, so I don't have any objections :). I'd then also flag methods that
>  are accessors for Q_PROPERTYs, so we don't have to duplicate them in the
>  C# sources.
> 
> A generator based on smoke would simplify things by some extent. We
>  wouldn't have to duplicate the configuration files and would make the
>  bindings a bit more dynamic (we could load and even create new bindings on
>  demand, without prior knowledge of the library to bind (using the
>  System.Emit namespace)).
Yes, but I'm not sure we have the details of the signals, Q_PROPERTY's and 
slots in the smoke lib. Maybe we would need some new method attributes for 
them. An mf_property could be a Q_PROPERTY setter/getter, and mf_attribute 
could be an C++ variable getter/setter. Both would map onto C# properties.

If we use the PySide comment extractor, and it is adapted to work with 
comments in headers, we don't have to bother with adding them to the C# 
sources anymore.

> Anyway, I think it's a good idea to add mf_attribute.
Ah, after I posted the mail I realized the flags are in an unsigned char, and 
we've run out of space. So it would need to be changed to an unsigned short 
instead. Maybe wait until we have several BIC changes to smoke.h and do them 
all at once? Now we have several projects using the Smoke libs we have to be 
careful to all keep using the same versions.

Also I think a 'mf_overloaded' flag would be useful as if a method isn't 
overloaded, there is no need to keep looking it up, and the result of the first 
lookup can be cached.

-- Richard