SWIGLAL is a collection of scripts used to build Python and Octave interfaces to the LALSuite gravitational-wave data analysis libraries, written in C.

This repository was extracted from the LALSuite development history, in order to illustrate the history of the development of SWIGLAL. The tagged versions of SWIGLAL correspond to versions of the LAL library, a key component of LALSuite that provides core routines, including SWIGLAL.

SWIGLAL is fully integrated to LALSuite, and as such cannot be built directly from this repository. Instructions for obtaining the Python and Octave interfaces, either through pre-built packages or by building from source, are linked to from the main LALSuite development repository.

SWIGLAL is primarily based on SWIG, a tool which generates wrapper code for the public constants, functions, and classes exported by the LALSuite C header files. The generated wrapper code (C for Python, C++ for Octave) is then compiled to create a dynamically loadable modules, which can then be accessed by e.g. using import for Python. This enables LALSuite constants, functions, and classes to be used directly from Python and Octave.

The SWIGLAL scripts build upon the basic wrappers generated by SWIG in the following respects:

• SWIGLAL passes the LALSuite C header files through SWIG twice. The first pass uses the SWIG -xml mode to generate an XML syntax tree describing the public constants, functions, and classes exported by LALSuite; in essence, SWIG is used as a C header parser. Information from the XML syntax tree is used by the script generate_swig_iface.py to automate further annotation of the LALSuite C header files, which are then passed through SWIG a second time, using either its -python or -octave mode to generate Python or Octave wrappers respectively.

• SWIGLAL provides header files, written in C with SWIG preprocessor directives, which contain code to further integrate the wrappers with LALSuite. The header SWIGCommon.i provide common definitions, while the headers SWIGOctave.i and SWIGPython.i provide definitions specific to Python and Octave. The headers SWIGLALAlpha.i and SWIGLALOmega.i provide definitions specific to the LAL library.

SWIGLAL includes extensive tests of the Python and Octave wrappers, provided by the files SWIGLALTest.h, SWIGTest.c, SWIGTestLALPython, and SWIGTestLALOctave.m.

SWIGLAL is documented as part of LALSuite. The LALSuite Doxygen documentation provides detailed documentation of the definitions provided by SWIGCommon.i, SWIGLALAlpha.i, and SWIGLALOmega.i.

SWIGLAL is supported as part of LALSuite. The LALSuite contributing guide provides information on reporting issues.

The files in this repository are dual-licensed under the GPL 2.0 license (or any later version), and the MIT (Expat) license. You can choose between one of them if you use the files in this repository.

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later OR MIT