On Mon, 2022-05-09 at 12:23 +0100, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> > But since what you want is something that works in arbitrary Python
> > code, not just within GDB, doesn't pybind11 already do everything
> > you
> > want?
> > https://github.com/pybind/pybind11
> 
> If you don't want to (or can't) use pybind11 to create Python
> bindings, and you don't want to use the GDB Python API, then you will
> have a ton of work to do. The GDB Python API is what provides all the
> tools for traversing C++ class hierarchies, examining template
> arguments, casting values to related types etc.

I think I've given the wrong impression: I definitely do not want to
avoid using the GDB Python API and I have no need for my python code to
work outside of GDB.

I was playing with this yesterday and came up with the attached
creating an "accessors.py" API.  It's certainly not fully-fleshed out
and is not well-tested; it doesn't try to address any container types.
More of a thought experiment.

The idea is that someone could import libstdcxx.v6.accessors and write
their own code using these Python types.  An alternative would of
course be to write a bunch of free methods, rather than create classes.

I went the other way and started with the xmethod implementation, so
mine doesn't do much with tuples.  I looked at printers.py a bit, and
considered moving the versioned namespace facilities to this new area
as well, but didn't go further.