MetaPy

MetaPy is a very simple python tool to generate code.

What does it do?

It finds the python code inside a text file, runs it, and replaces it by the generated output.

This is well adapted for generating C++ code. For instance, if:

• you need variadic templates and cannot use c++11
• you need to adapt an API several times (use of external libraries, client/server API, ...)

you can use a few lines of simple python code instead of using very powerful yet super-complex unreadable-two-days-after very-long-to-compile and hard-to-debug-even-with-gcc--E boost::preprocessor-based macros! Insert python code inside /*# python code #*/ blocks, add a few prints and you're done.

Example

• See test_includeh.h.meta and the expected result test_includeh.h.

• Generating the real files from the meta files can be easily integrated in your build environment. For example, with CMake, you can adapt the following macro:

  # macro to process meta files in a given source directory
  macro(meta src_dir) 
  file(GLOB_RECURSE meta_src ${src_dir}/*.meta)
      foreach(meta_file ${meta_src})
          string(REPLACE ".meta" "" file_to_generate ${meta_file})
          add_custom_command(OUTPUT ${file_to_generate}
                             COMMAND python ${WHERE_IS_LOCATED_METAPY}/metapy.py ${meta_file}
                             DEPENDS ${meta_file}
          )
          set(meta_gen ${meta_gen} ${file_to_generate})
      endforeach()
  endmacro()

Tests

Run:

python run_tests.py

License

This code is released under the MIT License (see LICENSE.TXT for details).

Copyright © 2011 Adrien Chauve