I have a demo application that is written in Python. It uses a lot of existing C++ code (written by me) that relies on OpenCV for image processing. Currently, communication between Python and C++ is being done through file I/O and subprocess calls, which isn’t very efficient. What is the best way to wrap the C++ code so that it can be called from Python?
There is too much C++ code to think about porting it to Python, so that’s not really an option.
A long time ago, the Python OpenCV wrappers were written in SWIG, but it looks like the most recent version of the wrappers is completely different. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
There are two ways that you can make your python program interact directly with your C/C++ program:
Wrap your C/C++ code in a DLL with C-API only. Then, use ctypes
to call C-function within the DLL. The advantage of this way is that you don’t need to include/link any other library.
Extend python by adding new python module. You may use boost python to easily create a python module. The advantage of this way is that you don’t need to wrap your code to C-API.