About this project

Binder is a tool for automatic generation of Python bindings for C++11 projects using Pybind11 and Clang LibTooling libraries. That is, Binder, takes a C++ project and compiles it into objects and functions that are all usable within Python. Binder is different from prior tools in that it handles special features new in C++11.

Initially Binder was developed to create PyRosetta - Python bindings for Rosetta project. Using such rather large C++ code base (Rosetta have ~3M SLOC of C++11 code) allowed to develop fully automated solution capable of bindings almost any C++11 code without need of human intervention.

Core features

Automatically determine which types/functions could be bound and generate bindings for the following C++ code:

• functions
• enums
• C++ classes and structs, including:

• read/write access to public data members, including static data members
• class member functions including static functions
• class inner enums
• class operators

• automatically determine which template classes should be instantiated and generate bindings for it
• generate single shared library which on Python-import act as collection of Python modules representing hierarchy of C++ namespaces
• generated bindings for both Python-2.6+ and Python-3+

Goodies

Bindings generation is guided through config file which allows to configure:

• bindings for which namespace/type/function bindings should be generated
• default return policy for functions returning pointer, lvalue and rvalue references
• additional includes which should be added to generated code
• includes which should be ignored in generated codes
• specify custom bindings functions for type/template
• specify add-on bindings functions which will be called after automatic bindings was generated