Is there a reason why Python's ctypes.CDLL cannot automatically generate restype and argtypes from C header files?

Question

For example, it would be nice to be able to do this:

from ctypes import CDLL
mylib = CDLL('/my/path/mylib.so',header='/some/path/mylib.h')

instead of

from ctypes import *
mylib = CDLL('/my/path/mylib.so')
mylib.f.restype = c_double
mylib.f.argtypes = [c_double, c_double]
mylib.g.restype = c_int
mylib.g.argtypes = [c_double, c_int]

My experience with python suggests that either something very close to this has been done already and I just haven't been able to find it, or that there is a good reason not to. Are either of these the case?

Answer 1

I asked myself the same question and before I traveled down that road too far, I ran into ctypesgen:

http://code.google.com/p/ctypesgen/

It will handle all of this for you, although you will need to do a little learning up front. We use ctypesgen to generate one version of the Python bindings for the Subversion bindings. It works very well.