ctypes 0.9.9.9 released - July 21, 2006
=======================================
Overview
ctypes is an advanced ffi (Foreign Function Interface) package for
Python 2.3 and higher.
ctypes allows to call functions exposed from dlls/shared libraries
and has extensive facilities to create, access and manipulate
simple and complicated C data types in Python - in other words:
wrap libraries in pure Python. It is even possible to implement C
callback functions in pure Python.
ctypes runs on Windows, Windows CE, MacOS X, Linux, Solaris,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD. It may also run on other systems, provided that
libffi supports this platform.
Changes in 0.9.9.9
Index checking on 1-sized arrays was reintroduced, so they can no
longer be used as variable sized data.
Assigning None to pointer type structure fields possible overwrote
wrong fields.
Fixed a segfault when ctypes.wintypes were imported on non-Windows
machines.
Accept any integer or long value in the ctypes.c_void_p
constructor.
It is now possible to use custom objects in the ctypes foreign
function argtypes sequence as long as they provide a from_param
method, no longer is it required that the object is a ctypes type.
ctypes can now be built with MingW on Windows, but it will not
catch access violations then since MingW does no structured
exception handling.
Sync the darwin/x86 port libffi with the copy in PyObjC. This
fixes a number of bugs in that port. The most annoying ones were
due to some subtle differences between the document ABI and the
actual implementation :-(
Release the GIL during COM method calls, to avoid deadlocks in
Python coded COM objects.
Changes in 0.9.9.7
Fixes for 64-bit big endian machines.
It is now possible to read and write any index of pointer
instances (up to 0.9.9.6, reading was allowed for any index, but
writing only for index zero).
Support for unnamed (anonymous) structure fields has been added,
the field names must be listed in the '_anonymous_' class
variable. Fields of unnamed structure fields can be accessed
directly from the parent structure.
Enabled darwin/x86 support for libffi (Bob Ippolito and Ronald
Oussuren).
Added support for variable sized data structures: array
types with exactly 1 element don't do bounds checking any more,
and a resize function can resize the internal memory buffer of
ctypes instances.
Fixed a bug with certain array or structure types that contained
more than 256 elements.
Changes in 0.9.9.6
The most important change is that the old way to load libraries
has been restored: cdll.LoadLibrary(path), and CDLL(path) work
again. For details see the changelog in CVS and in the source
distribution.
It was a mistake to change that in the 0.9.9.3 release - I
apologize for any confusion and additional work this has caused or
will cause.
New module ctypes.util which contains a cross-platform
find_library function.
Sized integer types (c_int8, c_int16, and so on) have been added
by integrating a patch from Joe Wreschnig. Also c_size_t, which
corresonds to the 'size_t' C type has been added.
Two long standing bugs with pointers have been fixed. Thanks to
Axel Seibert for pushing me to the first, and thanks to Armin Rigo
for finding the second one.
The ctypes.decorator module has been removed completely, so the
'cdecl' and 'stdcall' symbols are no longer available.
The code generator has been removed completely. It will probably
be made available as a separate project later.
The samples directory has been removed because it was completely
out-of-date.
The .zip and .tar.gz source distributions no longer contain
different file sets.
The development in CVS now takes place in the HEAD again, the
'branch_1_0' branch is no longer used.
Changes in 0.9.9.3
Windows
The ctypes.com package is no longer included and supported.
It is replaced by the comtypes package which will be released
separately.
ctypes has been ported to Windows CE by Luke Dunstan.
Other platforms
Hye-Shik Chang has written a new build system for libffi
which should remove possible licensing issues.
All platforms
The library loading code has been rewritten by Andreas Degert,
there are now sophisticated methods to find shared libraries.
On OS X, this uses files from Bob Ippolito's macholib.
See the manual for details.
Finally I started to write the manual, it is available online:
http://tinyurl.com/7bpg4
New 'errcheck' protocol to check the return values of foreign
functions, suggested by Mike Fletcher.
Lots of bug fixes, especially for 64-bit platforms. Improved
performance when creating ctypes instances.
Subclasses of simple types (c_int, c_void_p, and so on) now
behave as expected - they are not automatically converted into
native Python types any longer.
Support for explicit byte ordering in structures has been
added (BigEndianStructure, LittleEndianStructure base
classes).
call byref() automatically, if needed, for POINTER types in
argtypes.
Lots of improvements to the code generator.
Download
Downloads are available in the sourceforge files section
<http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=71702>
Binary windows installers, which contain compiled extension
modules, are also available, be sure to download the correct one
for the Python version you are using.
Homepage
<http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/ctypes/>
Enjoy,
Thomas
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