Where to look to start writing your own
wrappers/bindings
It's quite possible to use
sip to generate Python bindings for many
types of C++ code, and not just Qt or KDE related code. SIP is
most often used to wrap Qt-based third party libraries, like the
QWT widgets.
However, Describing that process is beyond
the scope of this book. This appendix is meant to help you get
to grips with sip, but the fine details of actually building the
wrapper library is very platform dependent.
If you want to explore further, download
the CVS sources for PyQt (see
the Section called Installing
sip and PyQt without BlackAdder in Chapter 2,
which include the make files for generating C++ files from .sip
files (the PyQt source distribution has this done for you
already and doesn't include these make files). The CVS sources
also contain the qtmod.sip-in file, which is used to tell
sip a number of things: the name of the
module to build, the .sip files needed to build the module,
version control, and the include files and linker information
needed to compile a particular set of .sip files into a module
Python can use. Since SIP, like PyQt, is open source, you can
also look at the sip source code itself. The
PyKDE mailing list also includes discussions of
sip usage and coding, and is a place where
you can post your questions.