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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Preface</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<H1><a name="Preface"></a>1 Preface</H1>
<!-- INDEX -->
<div class="sectiontoc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn2">Introduction</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn4">SWIG Versions</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_license">SWIG License</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn5">SWIG resources</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn6">Prerequisites</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn7">Organization of this manual</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn8">How to avoid reading the manual</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn9">Backwards compatibility</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_release_notes">Release notes</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn10">Credits</a>
<li><a href="#Preface_nn11">Bug reports</a>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- INDEX -->
<H2><a name="Preface_nn2"></a>1.1 Introduction</H2>
<p>
SWIG (Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator) is a software development tool for building scripting language
interfaces to C and C++ programs. Originally developed in 1995, SWIG was
first used by scientists in the Theoretical Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory for
building user interfaces to simulation codes running on the Connection
Machine 5 supercomputer. In this environment, scientists needed to
work with huge amounts of simulation data, complex hardware, and a
constantly changing code base. The use of a scripting language
interface provided a simple yet highly flexible foundation for solving these
types of problems. SWIG simplifies development by largely automating
the task of scripting language integration--allowing developers and users
to focus on more important problems.
</p>
<p>
Although SWIG was originally developed for scientific applications, it
has since evolved into a general purpose tool that is used in a wide
variety of applications--in fact almost anything where C/C++ programming
is involved.
<H2><a name="Preface_nn4"></a>1.2 SWIG Versions</H2>
<p>
In the late 1990's, the most stable version of SWIG was release
1.1p5. Versions 1.3.x were officially development versions and these were released
over a period of 10 years starting from the year 2000. The final version in the 1.3.x
series was 1.3.40, but in truth the 1.3.x series had been stable for many years.
An official stable version was released along with the decision to make SWIG
license changes and this gave rise to version 2.0.0 in 2010.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_license"></a>1.3 SWIG License</H2>
<p>
The LICENSE file shipped with SWIG in the top level directory contains the SWIG license.
For further insight into the license including the license of SWIG's output code, please visit
the SWIG legal page - <a href="http://www.swig.org/legal.html">http://www.swig.org/legal.html</a>.
</p>
<p>
The license was clarified in version 2.0.0
so that the code that SWIG generated could be distributed
under license terms of the user's choice/requirements and at the same time the SWIG
source was placed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn5"></a>1.4 SWIG resources</H2>
<p>
The official location of SWIG related material is
</p>
<div class="shell"><pre>
<a href="http://www.swig.org">http://www.swig.org</a>
</pre></div>
<p>
This site contains the latest version of the software, users guide,
and information regarding bugs, installation problems, and
implementation tricks.
<p>
You can also subscribe to the swig-user mailing list by visiting the page
</p>
<div class="shell"><pre>
<a href="http://www.swig.org/mail.html">http://www.swig.org/mail.html</a>
</pre></div>
<p>
The mailing list often discusses some of the more technical aspects of
SWIG along with information about beta releases and future work.
</p>
<p>
Git and Subversion access to the latest version of SWIG is also available. More information
about this can be obtained at:
</p>
<div class="shell"><pre>
<a href="http://www.swig.org/svn.html">SWIG Bleeding Edge</a>
</pre></div>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn6"></a>1.5 Prerequisites</H2>
<p>
This manual assumes that you know how to write C/C++ programs and that you
have at least heard of scripting languages such as
Tcl, Python, and Perl. A detailed knowledge of these scripting
languages is not required although some familiarity won't
hurt. No prior experience with building C extensions to these
languages is required---after all, this is what SWIG does automatically.
However, you should be reasonably familiar with the use of
compilers, linkers, and makefiles since making
scripting language extensions is somewhat more complicated than
writing a normal C program.
</p>
<p>
Over time SWIG releases have become significantly more capable in
their C++ handling--especially support for advanced features like
namespaces, overloaded operators, and templates. Whenever possible,
this manual tries to cover the technicalities of this interface.
However, this isn't meant to be a tutorial on C++ programming. For many
of the gory details, you will almost certainly want to consult a good C++ reference. If you don't program
in C++, you may just want to skip those parts of the manual.
<H2><a name="Preface_nn7"></a>1.6 Organization of this manual</H2>
<p>
The first few chapters of this manual describe SWIG in general and
provide an overview of its capabilities. The remaining chapters are
devoted to specific SWIG language modules and are self
contained. Thus, if you are using SWIG to build Python interfaces, you
can probably skip to that chapter and find almost everything you need
to know.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn8"></a>1.7 How to avoid reading the manual</H2>
<p>
If you hate reading manuals, glance at the "Introduction" which
contains a few simple examples. These
examples contain about 95% of everything you need to know to use
SWIG. After that, simply use the language-specific chapters as a reference.
The SWIG distribution also comes with a large directory of
examples that illustrate different topics.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn9"></a>1.8 Backwards compatibility</H2>
<p>
If you are a previous user of SWIG, don't expect
SWIG to provide complete backwards compatibility.
Although the developers strive to the utmost to keep backwards compatibility,
this isn't always possible as the
primary goal over time is to make SWIG
better---a process that would simply be impossible if the developers
are constantly bogged down with backwards compatibility issues.
Potential incompatibilities are clearly marked in the detailed
<a href="#Preface_release_notes">release notes</a>.
</p>
<p>
If you need to work with different versions of SWIG and backwards
compatibility is an issue, you can use the SWIG_VERSION preprocessor
symbol which holds the version of SWIG being executed.
SWIG_VERSION is a hexadecimal integer such as 0x010311 (corresponding to SWIG-1.3.11).
This can be used in an interface file to define different typemaps, take
advantage of different features etc:
</p>
<div class="code"><pre>
#if SWIG_VERSION >= 0x010311
/* Use some fancy new feature */
#endif
</pre></div>
<p>
Note: The version symbol is not defined in the generated SWIG
wrapper file. The SWIG preprocessor has defined SWIG_VERSION since SWIG-1.3.11.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_release_notes"></a>1.9 Release notes</H2>
<p>
The CHANGES.current, CHANGES and RELEASENOTES files shipped with SWIG in the top level directory
contain, respectively, detailed release notes for the current version,
detailed release notes for previous releases and summary release notes from SWIG-1.3.22 onwards.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn10"></a>1.10 Credits</H2>
<p>
SWIG is an unfunded project that would not be possible without the
contributions of many people working in their spare time.
If you have benefitted from using SWIG, please consider
<a href="http://www.swig.org/donate.html">Donating to SWIG</a> to keep development going.
There have been a large varied number of people
who have made contributions at all levels over time. Contributors
are mentioned either in the COPYRIGHT file or CHANGES files shipped with SWIG or in submitted bugs.
</p>
<H2><a name="Preface_nn11"></a>1.11 Bug reports</H2>
<p>
Although every attempt has been made to make SWIG bug-free, we are also trying
to make feature improvements that may introduce bugs.
To report a bug, either send mail to the SWIG developer
list at the <a href="http://www.swig.org/mail.html">swig-devel mailing list</a> or report a bug
at the <a href="http://www.swig.org/bugs.html">SWIG bug tracker</a>. In your report, be as specific as
possible, including (if applicable), error messages, tracebacks (if a
core dump occurred), corresponding portions of the SWIG interface file
used, and any important pieces of the SWIG generated wrapper code. We
can only fix bugs if we know about them.
</p>
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