[libRETS-users] Perl bindings

[Keith T. Garner]

Casimir Loeber wrote:
> I have recently installed the latest versions of librets and swig in
> hopes of getting the perl bindings working.

As Eric Raymond once observed, all great programs come out of scratching
one's itch!  Looks like you're starting to scratch.

> Librets built without any
> trouble but when trying to build the perl bindings with the command
> 'make perl' in the project/swig directory, I get this output:

[snip]

> I am running Ubuntu Edgy Eft 2.6.17-10-generic with swig 1.3.31
> 
> Are these the same issues you have run into before?

Dave worked 100% on the perl stuff before, so hopefully he'll comment on
that.  I honestly don't know.

> What would it take to get perl support up the the same level as the
> other bindings?

Honestly, I'm just learning swig myself as I slowly work on the php bindings
in my spare time.  (I've got those 60% working but with memory leaks.)

Speaking from my php experiance, you'll need to understand a bit about how
perl calls c/c++ functions, how swig generates its wrapper code, the librets
c++ api.  (I spent a good day learning the basics of how the php/zend stuff
interfaces with C level code.)  You also need to understand that each of
swig's language modules are independantly maintained, so they are all at
different levels of functionality.  Hotter languages like ruby and python
seem to be better supoorted these days.

If I remeber what Dave said, its that some of the C++ STL classes we use
didn't get wrapped well.  From the error you're showing, it looks like when
swig used its perl templates to create the wrapper code, it didn't know how
to expand some sort of copy constructor, but I'd really have to really dig
into it to find out.

Hopefully this points you in the right direction.

Keith

-- 
  Keith T. Garner - Managing Director - Center for REALTOR® Technology
   kgarner at realtors.org - 312-329-3294 - http://blog.realtors.org/crt