Re: [GI] Get info about return value

[Juan Rafael García Blanco <juanrgar gmail com>]

Thank you very much for your reply; I see it more clear now. Please find my comments inlined.

On 01 Dec 2013, at 20:46, Colin Walters <walters verbum org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Sun, 2013-12-01 at 19:43 +0100, Juan Rafael García Blanco wrote:
>
> > I’m trying to generate automatic bindings for gobject-introspected libraries for a compiled language. 
>
> Compiled as in C/C++, so you want e.g. "GtkWidget *" for arguments of
> type Gtk.Widget?  Reversing g-ir-scanner is easy for the basic cases,
> but gets nontrivial with stuff like inout arrays.

Exactly, compiled as in C/C++. I’ve not reached the point in where I need to handle arrays.

> > Now I’m the need of generating method signatures, but I couldn’t find a way to get a string representation
> > for return and argument types. 
>
> You'll have to clarify exactly what you want to do with a string
> representation.

Sorry, I used a confusing expression. By string representation I meant exactly what you mentioned above: 
"GtkWidget *" for Gtk.Widget (pointer). I meant a string representation from the point of view of the 
language I’m trying to generate bindings for; that is, actual code in the target language.

> > Once I get the corresponding GITypeInfo I don’t know how to proceed.
> > I would like to get a pointer to the GIObjectInfo, GIEnumInfo,
>
> Call g_base_info_get_interface() to get the target type, then
> g_base_info_get_type() will tell you whether it's e.g. a
> GI_INFO_TYPE_ENUM, a GI_INFO_TYPE_OBJECT, etc.

After I read this I tried something and I think that I misunderstood what get_interface means. I thought that 
interface stood for actual gobject interfaces; but now I see that it’s also applicable to standard classes. 
And the GType tag refers to exactly that, GType.

> The gjs and pygobject git repositories should be useful references.

Yes, I’m aware of these GI users; but here I’m in doubt: since I’m trying to generate ‘static’ bindings (i.e. 
for a compiled language), is girepository (i.e. the gobject-introspection library that interacts with 
typelibs) suitable for my needs? Or should I rather use GIR files directly and build my own parser?

I’ve been told that using the gobject-introspection library and therefore typelib files could make my 
bindings platform dependent. I’m not sure of this; I think that I can easily overcome the platform dependent 
parts of typlibs. So this is the question that I’m a little bit afraid of doing myself: is it right to use 
the gobject-introspction library to generate bindings for a compiled language?

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Juan.