h3-py
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v4: improve memory management tooling
I'd like a better Cython primitive for allocating, filling, and converting from an H3 index array to a Cython memview than our current approach of paired function calls to create_ptr and create_mv.
Example:
cpdef H3int[:] get_pentagon_indexes(int res):
cdef:
h3lib.H3Error err
check_res(res)
n = h3lib.pentagonCount()
ptr = create_ptr(n)
err = h3lib.getPentagons(res, ptr)
mv = create_mv(ptr, n)
return mv
Ideas:
- context manager (i'm not sure this can be done ergonomically)
- "memory manager" object that's in control of the size, allocation, type, and memory-view-creation of the memory
- avoid the need to mentally pair the memory and the memory size
- can have accessor methods or Python attributes to create/access the pointer and memory view
Other kinds of arrays
This pattern also doesn't cover when we have to allocate space for non-H3Index arrays.
- https://github.com/uber/h3-py/pull/248
Another idea if this ends up being a Cython class: we could use the class to do handy things like removing H3_NULL values and freeing the extra memory, or canonicalizing the array.