Introduce CFFI-based python bindings

This introduces CFFI-based Python3-only bindings.
The bindings aim at:
- Better performance on pypy
- Easier to use Python-C interface
- More "pythonic"
  - The API should not allow invalid operations
  - Use native object protocol where possible
- Memory safety; whatever you do from python, it should not coredump.

1 files changed, 62 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/bindings/python-cffi/notdb/__init__.py b/bindings/python-cffi/notdb/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..67051df5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bindings/python-cffi/notdb/__init__.py
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+"""Pythonic API to the notmuch database.
+
+Creating Objects
+================
+
+Only the :class:`Database` object is meant to be created by the user.
+All other objects should be created from this initial object.  Users
+should consider their signatures implementation details.
+
+Errors
+======
+
+All errors occuring due to errors from the underlying notmuch database
+are subclasses of the :exc:`NotmuchError`.  Due to memory management
+it is possible to try and use an object after it has been freed.  In
+this case a :exc:`ObjectDestoryedError` will be raised.
+
+Memory Management
+=================
+
+Libnotmuch uses a hierarchical memory allocator, this means all
+objects have a strict parent-child relationship and when the parent is
+freed all the children are freed as well.  This has some implications
+for these Python bindings as parent objects need to be kept alive.
+This is normally schielded entirely from the user however and the
+Python objects automatically make sure the right references are kept
+alive.  It is however the reason the :class:`BaseObject` exists as it
+defines the API all Python objects need to implement to work
+correctly.
+
+Collections and Containers
+==========================
+
+Libnotmuch exposes nearly all collections of things as iterators only.
+In these python bindings they have sometimes been exposed as
+:class:`collections.abc.Container` instances or subclasses of this
+like :class:`collections.abc.Set` or :class:`collections.abc.Mapping`
+etc.  This gives a more natural API to work with, e.g. being able to
+treat tags as sets.  However it does mean that the
+:meth:`__contains__`, :meth:`__len__` and frieds methods on these are
+usually more and essentially O(n) rather than O(1) as you might
+usually expect from Python containers.
+"""
+
+from notdb import _capi
+from notdb._base import *
+from notdb._database import *
+from notdb._errors import *
+from notdb._message import *
+from notdb._tags import *
+from notdb._thread import *
+
+
+NOTMUCH_TAG_MAX = _capi.lib.NOTMUCH_TAG_MAX
+del _capi
+
+
+# Re-home all the objects to the package.  This leaves __qualname__ intact.
+for x in locals().copy().values():
+    if hasattr(x, '__module__'):
+        x.__module__ = __name__
+del x