SWIG
SWIG (Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator) is a free computer software tool used to connect programs written in C/C++ with scripting languages such as Tcl, Perl, Python, Ruby, Guile, PHP and other languages like Java, C#, and Ocaml. The aim is to achieve this connection with minimal effort: a small number of directives are added to the program's header files. Running the SWIG tool creates source code which provides the glue between C/C++ and the target language. Depending on the language, this glue comes in three forms: an executable that embeds the interpreter for the scripting language, a shared library that links into an existing interpreter as some form of extension module, or a shared library that can be linked to other programs compiled in the target language (for example, using JNI).
There are two main purposes of embedding a scripting engine into an existing C/C++ program:
- The program can then be customized much more quickly, using the scripting language rather than C/C++. The scripting engine may even be exposed to the end user, so that they can automate common tasks by writing scripts.
- Even if the final product is not to contain the scripting engine, it may nevertheless be quite useful to write testing scripts.
There are a very wide variety of reasons to create dynamic libraries that can be loaded into existing interpreters, including:
- Provide access to a C/C++ library which has no equivalent in the scripting language.
- Write the whole program in the scripting language, and after profiling, rewrite performance critical code in C or C++.
SWIG is written in C and C++ and has been publicly available since February 1996. The initial author and main developer is Dave Beazley, now at the University of Chicago. He is supported by an active group of volunteers. SWIG has been released under a BSD type license, meaning it can be used, copied, modified and redistributed freely, for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
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