[geos-devel] Swig Update and questions

[strk at refractions.net]

On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 06:30:59PM -0600, Charlie Savage wrote:
> >
> >It's not silly if it makes the SWIG bindings easier to maintain.
> 
> Agreed.  Except the gdal bindings are harder to maintain in some ways 
> due to the duplication of code.
> 
> Anyway, the difference in this case is that the GDAL object model is not 
> as rich as in GEOS.  GDAL just exposes "geometry" as opposed to point, 
> line, etc.

This is what GEOS wants to do as well.

> I think this boils down to three major decisions about the SWIG bindings 
> that need to be agreed on:
> 
> 1. What geometry model do clients work with? Just geometry or geometry, 
> point, line, etc.

Clients should only work with the C api, unless willing
to follow API revolutions for a couple of years.

> 2.  What compatibility benefits does the C api provide beyond the 
> benefits of the generated swig bindings?

The C interface will be careful maintained binary compatible
between versions.

> 3.  How much of GEOS's api gets exposed to clients?

The smallest possible. Ideally none :)
The GEOS API *is* the C-API, previous releases were insane
in exposing that wide C++ interface.

--strk;