[Spice_discussion] Creation of a Ruby Wrapper for C SPICE underSciRuby

[Gaurav Tamba]

I have looked at the old naif-spice ruby wrapper while writing up a
proposal for this project and will probably have a somewhat similar wrapper
interface. I haven't written any code yet, I'm just getting started and I
should have a public repository up on github very soon with the skeleton
code. I did not consider using SWIG but I did look at FFI and decided to
write the wrapper manually with the standard Ruby C API. For selecting the
functions to be ported, I decided to include all the functions in the
lunaserv gem and found similar related functions in the NAIF SPICE Most
Used APIs list
<https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/C/info/mostused.html>.

here are some more details in the form of my GSoC proposal as suggested by
John (who is also one of my mentors for this project :) ) :-

Project Proposal
<https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByLtlXyXw5U2WUI4UmRtVnlCQjA>
More details on the Ruby API
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByLtlXyXw5U2YkJkUWtfQ1lYR28/view?usp=sharing>

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 12:29 AM, John Woods <john.o.woods at gmail.com> wrote:

> Gaurav, do you maybe want to share your GSOC proposal? Then people will be
> better able to provide comments. :)
>
> On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 12:29 PM Barry Carter <
> spice_discuss at barrycarter.info> wrote:
>
>> Are you familiar with http://lunaserv.lroc.asu.edu/naif-spice.html, have
>> you
>> written any code so far, and will you be using SWIG http://www.swig.org/
>> ?
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 14 May 2016, Gaurav Tamba wrote:
>>
>> > Date: Sat, 14 May 2016 10:22:30 +0530
>> > From: Gaurav Tamba <gaurav.tamba at gmail.com>
>> > To: spice_discussion at naif.jpl.nasa.gov
>> > Subject: [Spice_discussion] Creation of a Ruby Wrapper for C SPICE under
>> >     SciRuby
>> >
>> > Hello Everyone,
>> >
>> > I hope you're all doing great. I'm an undergraduate engineering student
>> > from India and I'm working on a project this summer for Google Summer of
>> > Code where I'll be making a wrapper interface for the C SPICE library in
>> > Ruby mentored by SciRuby (Formally, the project is listed here
>> > <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/projects/#5642148519084032>)
>> >
>> > One of my main goals for this project besides just making a working
>> wrapper
>> > in Ruby that ports the API, is to create an additional abstracted
>> ruby-like
>> > API  (the obvious bit is to make a simpler API, but another task is
>> > grouping multiple related functions into one function call for commonly
>> > compounded tasks) and to make the use of SPICE a better experience for
>> one
>> > not so comfortable in C or FORTRAN.
>> >
>> > I unfortunately have very little experience with the SPICE toolkit and
>> am
>> > primarily referring to this list here
>> > <https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/C/info/mostused.html>
>> for
>> > prioritizing which functions to port first. (Since the actual SPICE
>> library
>> > API is really large, it may not be possible to port more than a subset
>> of
>> > these features in the summer coding period, but I have no intention to
>> stop
>> > after that period is over either)
>> >
>> > I'd be immensely obliged if anyone could share their most frequent use
>> > cases with SPICE. This would help the most in the completion of the
>> project.
>> >
>> > I realize I've been vague about the specifics so please feel free to
>> ask me
>> > any specific ruby/non-ruby doubts about the wrapper.
>> >
>> > Best Regards,
>> > Gaurav
>> >
>>
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>>
>
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