Welcome to SWIG

SWIG is a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages. SWIG is used with different types of target languages including common scripting languages such as Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and Ruby. The list of supported languages also includes non-scripting languages such as C#, D, Go language, Java including Android, Lua, OCaml, Octave, Scilab and R. Also the Guile Scheme implementation is supported. SWIG is most commonly used to create high-level interpreted or compiled programming environments, user interfaces, and as a tool for testing and prototyping C/C++ software. SWIG is typically used to parse C/C++ interfaces and generate the 'glue code' required for the above target languages to call into the C/C++ code. SWIG can also export its parse tree in the form of XML. SWIG is free software and the code that SWIG generates is compatible with both commercial and non-commercial projects.

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Recent News

2026/08/06 - SWIG-4.5.0 released

• New C++20 support: concepts, requires-clauses and requires-expressions, type-constrained template parameters, constrained alias templates and abbreviated function templates (auto parameters).
• New C++17 support: class template argument deduction (CTAD) handling, user-defined deduction guides and pack expansion in using-declarations.
• C++14 generic lambdas and variable templates.
• Add support for wrapping std::function via the new std_function.i library.
• Template partial specialization fixes for function types and parameter packs.
• Numerous using-declaration, inherited-constructor and typedef-scope name resolution fixes.
• User-defined literal operators emitted without deprecated whitespace and multicharacter constants corrected to use int type.
• More powerful %rename for instantiated templates.
• cdata.i now uses a binary data type (e.g. Python bytes, JavaScript Uint8Array) so all byte values round-trip correctly.
• char *& string typemaps added to all remaining target languages.
• Runtime type system fixes, including cross-module type casts and a strict weak ordering fix in the type lookup.
• Memory allocation failure protection added to several typemaps.
• %typedef is deprecated; embed.i and the %new_copy_array macro are removed.
• Fewer compiler warnings in generated code.
• Python 2 is no longer supported; SWIG now targets Python 3.5 and later. Python 2 code paths and compatibility macros are removed from the generated wrappers and the SWIG library and the keyword/built-in warning list now tracks Python 3.
• Python: PEP 484 type annotations support added, new -typehints and .pyi stub generation, -builtin docstring parity, metaclass and director reference counting fixes and %nokwargs fixes.
• Lua: director support added; std::array, std::set, std::unordered_set, std::unordered_map, shared_ptr and nested class support added. Minimum Lua version is now 5.1.
• Ruby: generated wrappers migrated to the TypedData API (the deprecated Data API is removed in Ruby 4.1) and use embedded TypedData storage on Ruby 3.3 and later; GC compaction crash fix for STL containers of Ruby objects.
• Go: %rename of enums honoured, new -unique-id/-no-unique-id flags, Windows build and test support and various rvalue-reference and director fixes.
• R: %rename of enums and enum items honoured, scoped enum fixes and R 4.6.0 compatibility.
• JavaScript: v8 and node engines support v8 13.x and 14.x, as used by Node.js 24 and 26, with improved node-addon-api detection.
• Tcl 9 support.
• Minor fixes and improvements specific to: C#, D, Guile, Java, Octave, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Scilab.

2025/12/08 - SWIG-4.4.1 released

• Fix errors with some combinations of Py_LIMITED_API and recent Python versions.
• A couple of other minor fixes/improvements.

2025/10/20 - SWIG-4.4.0 released

• Python-3.14 and early Python-3.15 support including modernisations:
  • Remove some DeprecationWarnings.
  • Added support for free-threading Python.
  • Multi-phase module initialization.
  • Use heap types instead of static types.
• Go minimum version is now 1.20.
• Removed support for MzScheme/Racket.
• Minor typemap improvements.
• compactdefaultarg feature improvements and fixes.
• Fewer C, C++ and Java compiler warnings in generated code.
• c++-14 auto return type parsing fixes.
• Various improvements related to parsing expressions.
• Runtime type system thread safety fixes.
• Minor fixes and improvements specific to:
  C#, D, Guile, Java, Javascript, Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl.

2025/04/15 - SWIG-4.3.1 released

• Small number of regression fixes for Python and Java.
• Corner case operator precedence bug fix affecting type deduction.
• Octave 10 compilation errors fix.

2024/10/20 - SWIG-4.3.0 released

SWIG-4.3.0 summary:

• Add experimental support for C as a target language.
• MzScheme/Racket is deprecated and planned for removal in SWIG-4.4.
• The distributed Windows binary is now a 64-bit executable.
• Add some missing use of move semantics for performance improvements.
• Enhanced handling of namespaces when using the nspace feature.
• STL wrapper enhancements for std::unique_ptr, std::string_view,
  std::filesystem.
• Various enum and enum class wrapping improvements.
• Other C++ handling improvements around templates, friends, C++11
  trailing return types and C++17 fold expressions.
• Many parser improvements for both C and C++, especially expressions.
• Improvements to handling of string and character literals.
• Minor preprocessor fixes.
• Python: Stricter stable ABI conformance, add support for python-3.13.
• C#: Add support for converting Doxygen comments into XML C# comments.
• Various other target language specific enhancements and updates for
  Java, Javascript, Lua, MzScheme, Ocaml, Octave, Perl, Python, R, Ruby.

2024/02/24 - SWIG-4.2.1 released

SWIG-4.2.1 is primarily a stability and regression fix release, but also includes:

• Tcl 9.0 support.
• Octave 9.0 support.
• Improvements wrapping friend functions.
• Variadic templated functions within a template support.
• Type deduction enhancements.

2023/12/31 - SWIG-4.2.0 released

SWIG-4.2.0 summary:

• Various template wrapping improvements: template template parameters,
  variadic templates, partially specialized templates, const template
  parameters and improved error checking instantiating templates.
• Improved decltype() support for expressions.
• C++14 auto without trailing return type and C++11 auto variables.
• Numerous C++ using declarations improvements.
• Numerous fixes for constructors, destructors and assignment operators:
  implicit, default and deleted and related non-assignable variable
  wrappers.
• STL: std::array and std::map improvements, std::string_view support
  added.
• Various C preprocessor improvements.
• Various issues fixed to do with architecture specific long type.
• Various Doxygen improvements.
• D1/Tango support removed. D2/Phobos is now the supported D version
  and SWIG now generates code which works with recent D2 releases.
• New Javascript generator targeting Node.js binary stable ABI Node-API.
• Octave 8.1 support added.
• PHP7 support removed, PHP8 is now the supported PHP version.
• Python STL container wrappers now use the Python Iterator Protocol.
• Python stable ABI support added.
• Python 3.12 support added.
• Ruby 3.2 and 3.3 support.
• Scilab 2023.* support added.
• Various minor enhancements for C#, Go, Guile, Javascript, Lua, Ocaml,
  Perl, PHP, R, Racket, Ruby, Scilab and Tcl.
• A number of deprecated features have been removed.

2022/11/30 - SWIG-4.1.1 released

SWIG-4.1.1 summary:

• Couple of stability fixes.
• Stability fix in ccache-swig when calculating hashes of inputs.
• Some template handling improvements.
• R - minor fixes plus deprecation for rtypecheck typemaps being optional.

2022/10/24 - SWIG-4.1.0 released

SWIG-4.1.0 summary:

• Add Javascript Node v12-v18 support, remove support prior to v6.
• Octave 6.0 to 6.4 support added.
• Add PHP 8 support.
• PHP wrapping is now done entirely via PHP's C API - no more .php wrapper.
• Perl 5.8.0 is now the oldest version SWIG supports.
• Python 3.3 is now the oldest Python 3 version SWIG supports.
• Python 3.9-3.11 support added.
• Various memory leak fixes in Python generated code.
• Scilab 5.5-6.1 support improved.
• Many improvements for each and every target language.
• Various preprocessor expression handling improvements.
• Improved C99, C++11, C++14, C++17 support. Start adding C++20 standard.
• Make SWIG much more move semantics friendly.
• Add C++ std::unique_ptr support.
• Few minor C++ template handling improvements.
• Various C++ using declaration fixes.
• Few fixes for handling Doxygen comments.
• GitHub Actions is now used instead of Travis CI for continuous integration.
• Add building SWIG using CMake as a secondary build system.
• Update optional SWIG build dependency for regex support from PCRE to PCRE2.

2020/06/08 - SWIG-4.0.2 released

SWIG-4.0.2 summary:

• A few fixes around doxygen comment handling.
• Ruby 2.7 support added.
• Various minor improvements to C#, D, Java, OCaml, Octave, Python, R, Ruby.
• Considerable performance improvement running SWIG on large interface files.

More news

Last modified : Thu Aug 6 00:18:49 2026