Alternative Go Backend For SWIG

This repo is a demo of an alternative Go backend for SWIG. It uses the anonymous field feature in golang to shorten the wrapper code, and it also introduced a new feature to let Go's GC track C++ objects.

For one of my projects wxGo, there is a noticable improvement on the wrapper size. The .go file is about 30% smaller (declined from 321317 lines to 218316 lines, from ~12MB to ~8MB), the .cxx file is about 50% smaller (from 465027 lines to 220700 lines, from ~12MB to ~6MB).

The executable that use the library are also smaller. They are 5MB ~ 15MB smaller than before (both stripped), depending on the code.

Only working with -cgo option.

Let Go's GC Track C++ Objects

Current Memory Management

For now, SWIG generated go code will not track the C++ object. That means we have to manually call destructors if we won't use any C++ object. For example,

// Go code
import "wrap"

func test() {
    obj := wrap.NewObject()

    size := wrap.NewSize(40, 40)
    obj.SetWindowSize(size)
    wrap.DeleteSize(size)

    wrap.DeleteObject(obj)
}

New SWIG option -trackobject N

-trackobject can generate some useful functions and code to let Go's garbage collector delete C++ objects automatically when we don't need them. It has 4 levels for now, i.e N can be 0, 1, 2, or 3:

• Level 0: Do nothing.
• Level 1: Add SwigTrackObject and SwigUntrackObject functions to every object. Users can call these functions to let Go's GC track the object.
• Level 2: Automatically track the objects that is returned by a function by value. For example the object of A returned by SomeFunction,

struct A {/*...*/};
A SomeFunction(){ return A{}; }

These objects cannot be taken own by other functions, so we can safely track it.

• Level 3: (Experimental!!) Automatically track every object when it is created.

Using -trackobject 3 option, we can write the following code without memory leak:

// Go code
import "wrap"

func test() {
    obj := wrap.NewObject()
    obj.SetWindowSize(wrap.NewSize(40, 40))
}

However, we must think more if we want to use -trackobject 3 option. There are some issues about it.

Ownership Issues

It should be noticed that some C++ functions/classes will free or take ownship of other objects. That is, the objects will be deleted by C++ code. For example, there is a C++ function and a class that make things a bit complicated:

// C++ code
void DoSomething(Object* obj) {
    delete obj; // Oops!
}

class SomeClass {
public:
    void Attach(Object* obj) { mObj = obj; }
    ~SomeClass() { delete mObj; } // Oops!
private:
    Object* mObj;
};

If we use -trackobject 3 option, we must let Go know about it. Otherwise the obejcts will be double freed. This can be done by change the parameters' names to SWIG_TAKEOWN, after including trackobjects.i. SWIG source code is as below:

// SWIG code
%include "trackobjects.i"

void DoSomething(Object* SWIG_TAKEOWN);

class SomeClass {
public:
    void Attach(Object* SWIG_TAKEOWN);
};

Then Go will stop tracking the object when these methods are called. How about Detach? Some detach-like functions will receive an object as parameters to find which object to detach. For example,

// C++ code
void SomeClass::Detach(Object* obj) {
    mObjects.remove(obj);
}

For these functions, we can change their names to SWIG_DROPOWN to let Go track them again:

// SWIG code
void SomeClass::Detach(Object* SWIG_DROPOWN);

If detach functions don't receive a parameter, we can only use obj.SwigTrackObject() in Go to track it again, or remember to use wrap.DeleteObject(obj) to manually delete it.

Not tracking specific classes

For some reason, we may not want to track some specific C++ classes' objects. We can use %notracking directive to achieve this:

// SWIG code
%include "trackobjects.i"

%notracking SomeClass;
class SomeClass {};