Library bindings for other languages

[rcurtin]

Reported by speet3 on 30 Jul 42178952 12:20 UTC
Is it a good idea to generate and maintain bindings for languages other than C++? Perhaps languages like java, python or php?

That way a developer using one of those languages could take advantage of the speed offered our C++ implementation without wading through the torrents of newbie C++ development pitfalls.

Perhaps these bindings could be automatically generated by a tool like swig.

Migrated-From: http://trac.research.cc.gatech.edu/fastlab/ticket/208

[rcurtin]

Commented by jcline3 on 23 May 42179006 10:37 UTC
It sounds like a generally good idea to me, but can an automated tool like swig cope with our use of templates over polymorphism in a sane manner?

[rcurtin]

Commented by rcurtin on 12 Feb 42201694 10:02 UTC
I meant to respond to this earlier, but this is a long-term goal. We should provide interfaces to MATLAB, R, and Python, plus whatever else is easy. I don't know enough to comment on if SWIG would be good, but Patrick Mason told me he had MLPACK bindings working for R, but then he ran out of free time during the semester. I'm hoping he's interested in working with us over the summer and he can flesh out this idea a bit more.

[rcurtin]

For some clarification on where this idea has gone, see the summer of code ideas page and the automatic bindings project: https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/wiki/SummerOfCodeIdeas

[MikeLing]

Hey @rcurtin, I have experience for python coding(two years experience for Mozilla A-team and I worked for it as GSoC student) and I'm a postgraduate student majoring in CS. Could I worked for Python binding for mlpack? However, I never do the binding job before, could you give me some information about it?

[MikeLing]

After I found some more information about swig[1][2], I guess I know how to bind it with python. Do I need to create a PR on my branch for discussing for now?

[1] http://www.swig.org/Doc3.0/SWIG.html#SWIG
[2]http://www.swig.org/Doc3.0/Python.html#Python

[rcurtin]

I'm going to go ahead and close this now that the automatic binding generator is done and we have Python bindings. Although it would be nice to add more languages (and that will happen over time), we can either open a new issue for that or simply work on it without an issue.