• Jason Rhinelander's avatar
    Move support for return values of called Python functions · ed14879a
    Jason Rhinelander authored
    Currently pybind11 always translates values returned by Python functions
    invoked from C++ code by copying, even when moving is feasible--and,
    more importantly, even when moving is required.
    
    The first, and relatively minor, concern is that moving may be
    considerably more efficient for some types.  The second problem,
    however, is more serious: there's currently no way python code can
    return a non-copyable type to C++ code.
    
    I ran into this while trying to add a PYBIND11_OVERLOAD of a virtual
    method that returns just such a type: it simply fails to compile because
    this:
    
        overload = ...
        overload(args).template cast<ret_type>();
    
    involves a copy: overload(args) returns an object instance, and the
    invoked object::cast() loads the returned value, then returns a copy of
    the loaded value.
    
    We can, however, safely move that returned value *if* the object has the
    only reference to it (i.e. if ref_count() == 1) and the object is
    itself temporary (i.e. if it's an rvalue).
    
    This commit does that by adding an rvalue-qualified object::cast()
    method that allows the returned value to be move-constructed out of the
    stored instance when feasible.
    
    This basically comes down to three cases:
    
    - For objects that are movable but not copyable, we always try the move,
      with a runtime exception raised if this would involve moving a value
      with multiple references.
    - When the type is both movable and non-trivially copyable, the move
      happens only if the invoked object has a ref_count of 1, otherwise the
      object is copied.  (Trivially copyable types are excluded from this
      case because they are typically just collections of primitive types,
      which can be copied just as easily as they can be moved.)
    - Non-movable and trivially copy constructible objects are simply
      copied.
    
    This also adds examples to example-virtual-functions that shows both a
    non-copyable object and a movable/copyable object in action: the former
    raises an exception if returned while holding a reference, the latter
    invokes a move constructor if unreferenced, or a copy constructor if
    referenced.
    
    Basically this allows code such as:
    
        class MyClass(Pybind11Class):
            def somemethod(self, whatever):
                mt = MovableType(whatever)
                # ...
                return mt
    
    which allows the MovableType instance to be returned to the C++ code
    via its move constructor.
    
    Of course if you attempt to violate this by doing something like:
    
        self.value = MovableType(whatever)
        return self.value
    
    you get an exception--but right now, the pybind11-side of that code
    won't compile at all.
    ed14879a
example-virtual-functions.cpp 11.6 KB