I'm writing a script in which I simply want to retrieve a set of arbitrary log message and then do stuff with them. Using the Python bindings seemed like the logical choice (whether is was or not is now debatable, but that isn't the point of this mail). Turns out that using the Python bindings is a *painful* experience, for at least the following reasons (and they may extend to the other swig-generated bindings, I don't know):
* This is little to no documentation. What docs that do exist relate to the C APIs, and have little bearing on Python types and their conversions. * Because of the above, development with the bindings tends to be by trial-and-error. * The bindings are verbose (client.svn_client_get_log5), and do little to help the user. * They are still very C-like, not using common idioms from the target language. I don't know how to solve these problems today or tomorrow, and they may already be old news to many people here. But to a new user of the bindings, it sure was a frustrating experience (and I already know the Subversion C infrastructure!) I finally gave up and just used the commandline, piping the results into my processing script. I feel sorry for folks trying to use the bindings from scratch. -Hyrum (who feels better now)
