Don’t bind the top-level C API

The libvips C API (vips_add() and so on) is very inconvenient and dangerous to use from other languages due to its heavy use of varargs.

It’s much better to use the layer below. This lower layer is structured as create operator, set parameters, execute, extract results. For example, you can execute vips_invert() like this:

/* compile with
 *
 * gcc -g -Wall callvips.c `pkg-config vips --cflags --libs`
 *
 */

#include <vips/vips.h>

int
main( int argc, char **argv )
{
    VipsImage *in;
    VipsImage *out;
    VipsOperation *op;
    VipsOperation *new_op;
    GValue gvalue = { 0 };

    if( VIPS_INIT( argv[0] ) ) 
        /* This shows the vips error buffer and quits with a fail exit
         * code.
         */
        vips_error_exit( NULL ); 

    /* This will print a table of any ref leaks on exit, very handy for
     * development.
     */
    vips_leak_set( TRUE );

    if( argc != 3 )
        vips_error_exit( "usage: %s input-filename output-filename", 
            argv[0] );

    if( !(in = vips_image_new_from_file( argv[1], NULL )) )
        vips_error_exit( NULL ); 

    /* Create a new operator from a nickname. NULL for unknown operator.
     */
    op = vips_operation_new( "invert" );

    /* Init a gvalue as an image, set it to in, use the gvalue to set the
     * operator property.
     */
    g_value_init( &gvalue, VIPS_TYPE_IMAGE );
    g_value_set_object( &gvalue, in );
    g_object_set_property( G_OBJECT( op ), "in", &gvalue );
    g_value_unset( &gvalue );

    /* We no longer need in: op will hold a ref to it as long as it needs
     * it. 
     */
    g_object_unref( in ); 

    /* Call the operation. This will look up the operation+args in the vips
     * operation cache and either return a previous operation, or build
     * this one. In either case, we have a new ref we must release.
     */
    if( !(new_op = vips_cache_operation_build( op )) ) {
        g_object_unref( op );
        vips_error_exit( NULL ); 
    }
    g_object_unref( op );
    op = new_op;

    /* Now get the result from op. g_value_get_object() does not ref the
     * object, so we need to make a ref for out to hold.
     */
    g_value_init( &gvalue, VIPS_TYPE_IMAGE );
    g_object_get_property( G_OBJECT( op ), "out", &gvalue );
    out = VIPS_IMAGE( g_value_get_object( &gvalue ) );
    g_object_ref( out ); 
    g_value_unset( &gvalue );

    /* All done: we can unref op. The output objects from op actually hold
     * refs back to it, so before we can unref op, we must unref them. 
     */
    vips_object_unref_outputs( VIPS_OBJECT( op ) ); 
    g_object_unref( op );

    if( vips_image_write_to_file( out, argv[2], NULL ) )
        vips_error_exit( NULL ); 

    g_object_unref( out );

    return( 0 ); 
}

libvips has a couple of extra things to let you examine the arguments and types of an operator at runtime. Use vips_argument_map() to loop over all the arguments of an operator, and vips_object_get_argument() to fetch the type and flags of a specific argument.

Use vips_operation_get_flags() to get general information about an operator.

Compiled language which can call C

The C++ binding uses this lower layer to define a function called VImage::call() which can call any libvips operator with a not-varargs set of variable arguments.

A small Python program walks the set of all libvips operators and generates a set of static bindings. For example:

VImage VImage::invert( VOption *options )
{
    VImage out;

    call( "invert", (options ? options : VImage::option()) ->
        set( "in", *this ) ->
        set( "out", &out ) );

    return( out );
}

So from C++ you can call any libvips operator (though without type-safety) with VImage::call(), or use the member functions on VImage to get type-safe calls for at least the required operator arguments.

The VImage class also adds automatic reference counting, constant expansion, operator overloads, and various other useful features.

Dynamic language with FFI

Languages like Ruby, Python, JavaScript and LuaJIT can’t call C directly, but they do support FFI. The bindings for these languages work rather like C++, but use FFI to call into libvips and run operations.

Since these languages are dynamic, they can add another trick: they intercept the method-missing hook and attempt to run any method calls not implemented by the Image class as libvips operators. This makes these bindings self-writing: they only contain a small amount of code and just expose everything they find in the libvips class hierarchy.

Dynamic langauge without FFI

PHP does not have FFI, unfortunately, so for this language a small native module implements the general vips_call() function for PHP language types, and a larger pure PHP layer makes it convenient to use.

gobject-introspection

The C source code to libvips has been marked up with special comments describing the interface in a standard way. These comments are read by the gobject-introspection package when libvips is compiled and used to generate a typelib, a description of how to call the library. Many languages have gobject-introspection packages: all you need to do to call libvips from your favorite language is to start g-o-i, load the libvips typelib, and you should have the whole library available. For example, from Python it’s as simple as:

from gi.repository import Vips

You can now use all of the libvips introspection machinery, as noted above.

Unfortunately g-o-i has some strong disadvantages. It is not very portable, since you will need a g-o-i layer for whatever platform you are targetting; it does not cross-compile well, since typelibs include a lot of very-low level data (such as exact structure layouts); and installation for your users is likely to be tricky.

If you have a choice, I would recommend simply using FFI.

Documentation

You can generate searchable docs from a .gir (the thing that is built from scanning libvips and which in turn turn the typelib is made from) with g-ir-doc-tool, for example:

$ g-ir-doc-tool --language=Python -o ~/mydocs Vips-8.0.gir

Then to view them, either:

$ yelp ~/mydocs 

Or perhaps:

$ cd ~/mydocs 
$ yelp-build html .

To make HTML docs. This is an easy way to see what you can call in the library.