Sample project for setting up a C++ plugin for Python

Solution file in rlCppPlugin contains 3 projects:

• rlMathCalc

  • Defines some trigonometric functions

• rlCppPlugin

  • Exposes functions in rlMathCalc to a dll using CPython

• rlCppPlugin2

  • Exposes functions in rlMathCalc to a dll using PyBind11
  • Simpler than CPython

Remarks:

• All projects in solutions builds to /output folder
• Additional Python library directories and includes are hardcoded (to Python libs)
• Dll extensions are set to .pyd in vs configuration properties
• Post build events copies resulting .pyd to Python source directory

rlCppPythonPlugin.py imports functions from the above mentioned plugins and test their perfomance.

Example results with N = 50e6:

PyBind11 simplifies the definitions of the functions and module to be exposed to Python from C++. However, has some overhead for each function calls. Haven't digged into it, but probably some work arounds for that. When doing large calculations in single functions, there's isn't any difference in perfomance between the two.