pybind11-cmake: Straightforward boilerplate generation for pybind11 + cmake

Introduction

pybind11 is great and I use it all the time. In most cases I need to work with a cmake file so I start the project off using the cmake example. This usually involves copying the CMakeExtension / Builder class to my setup.py file and adding pybind11 to my project as a git submodule. I could do without cmake in simpler projects as shown in the python_example but I find it difficult to use for more complicated projects.

The purpose of this project is to provide an easy to use interface to generate all the boilerplate for the cmake_example and provide the CMakeExtension / Builder class. It also finds the pybind11 headers without needing to make a git submodule. I will be using this exclusively from now on for all my C++ wrapping needs and hope it is useful to others as well.

Installation

Just run (preferably in a virtualenv)

pip install pybind11_cmake

You can also clone this repo and run pip install ..

Usage

The package exposes a single script: pybind11_new_project

usage: pybind11_new_project [-h] [-a AUTHOR_NAME] [-e AUTHOR_EMAIL] [-c] [-g]
                            package-name cmake-project-name module-name
                            output-directory

positional arguments:
  package-name          -
  cmake-project-name    -
  module-name           -
  output-directory      -

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -a AUTHOR_NAME, --author_name AUTHOR_NAME
                        Author name for setup.py reasons. (default: '')
  -e AUTHOR_EMAIL, --author_email AUTHOR_EMAIL
                        Author email for setup.py reasons. (default: '')
  -c, --cmake_file_only
                        Flag for generating only a CMakeLists.txt file.
                        (default: False)
  -g, --generate_example_src
                        Generate an example c++ file. (default: False)

A basic example would be to go into the root of your project folder and run:

pybind11_new_project test_package test_project test_module . -g

This will create a CMakeLists.txt file with the project set at test_project and a pybind11 module defined as test_module and a corresponding setup.py file set up to use that CMakeLists.txt file to build your module. Because the -g flag is used it will also create a main.cpp file which contains a basic example of how to expose a function using pybind11. At this point you can just python setup.py build, python setup.py install or pip install . your python package. For the above command after installation you can run

from test_module import *
print(add(5, 5))
print(subtract(20, 5))

Which should print

5
15

Contributing

There are three major hacks in this repo that I do not like and could use help with:

I straight up copied all the cmake config information from the pybind11 repo (this is the tools directory)
I run a python command inside the pybind11Config.cmake file to find the headers as installed by the pybind11 python package and set the relevant cmake variables
For the find_package command to work with pybind11 installed from PyPI in a virtualenv, the user has to set the pybind11_DIR variable in their CMakeLists.txt. I curently do this by calling a python command and discovering the location of the pybind11_cmake package where the pybind11Config.cmake file is. The script generates a CMakeLists.txt file that already contains this line.

If you’re a cmake / setup.py wizard and want to help kindly open a PR with a solution for any of these issues.

Common pybind11 questions and their solutions

I can’t use `target_link_libraries`

You might need to add the PRIVATE keyword (e.g. target_link_libraries(open_karto PRIVATE Boost::thread) )

Passing shared pointers between python and C++

Normally a pybind11 wrapped C++ object is passed as a unique_ptr. You can instead expose it as a shared_ptr by doing something like:

py::class_<ScanMatcherConfig, std::shared_ptr<ScanMatcherConfig>>(m, "ScanMatcherConfig")
  .def(py::init<>())
  .def_readwrite("coarse_angle_resolution", &ScanMatcherConfig::m_pCoarseAngleResolution);

Note the two template arguments for py::class_.

rodprice/pybind11-cmake