v0.4.0

Features

• Added macOS 10.15 (Catalina) to the test matrix. #145
• Added 517 and 518 build system metadata to pyproject.toml. #156
• Added official support for Python 3.8. #162
• Added a varargs keyword argument to send_message` to allow calling variadic methods more safely. #174
• Changed ObjCMethod to call methods using send_message instead of calling IMPs directly. This is mainly an internal change and should not affect most existing code, although it may improve compatibility with Objective-C code that makes heavy use of runtime reflection and method manipulation (such as swizzling). #177

Bugfixes

• Fixed Objective-C method calls in "flat" syntax accepting more arguments than the method has. The extra arguments were previously silently ignored. An exception is now raised if too many arguments are passed. #123
• Fixed ObjCInstance.__str__ <rubicon.objc.api.ObjCInstance.__str__> throwing an exception if the object's Objective-C description is nil. #125
• Corrected a slow memory leak caused every time an asyncio timed event handler triggered. #146
• Fixed various minor issues in the build and packaging metadata. #156
• Removed unit test that attempted to pass a struct with bit fields into a C function by value. Although this has worked in the past on x86 and x86_64, ctypes never officially supported this, and started generating an error in Python 3.7.6 and 3.8.1 (see bpo-39295). #157
• Corrected the invocation of NSApplication.terminate() when the CocoaLifecycle` is ended. #170
• Fixed send_message not accepting SEL objects for the selector parameter. The documentation stated that this is allowed, but actually doing so caused a type error. #177

Improved Documentation

• Added detailed reference documentation </reference/index> for all public APIs of rubicon.objc. #118
• Added a how-to guide for calling regular C functions </how-to/c-functions> using ctypes and rubicon.objc. #147

Deprecations and Removals

• Removed the i386 architecture from the test matrix. It is still supported on a best-effort basis, but compatibility is not tested automatically. #139
• Tightened the API of send_message, removing some previously allowed shortcuts and features that were rarely used, or likely to be used by accident in an unsafe way. In most cases, Rubicon's high-level method call syntax provided by ObjCInstance can be used instead of send_message. This syntax is almost always more convenient to use, more readable and less error-prone. send_message should only be used in cases not supported by the high-level syntax.
• Disallowed passing class names as str/bytes as the receiver argument of send_message. If you need to send a message to a class object (i. e. call a class method), use ObjCClass or get_class to look up the class, and pass the resulting ObjCClass or Class` object as the receiver.
• Disallowed passing ~ctypes.c_void_p objects as the receiver argument of send_message. The receiver argument now has to be of type objc_id, or one of its subclasses (such as Class), or one of its high-level equivalents (such as ObjCInstance). All Objective-C objects returned by Rubicon's high-level and low-level APIs have one of these types. If you need to send a message to an object pointer stored as ~ctypes.c_void_p, ~ctypes.cast it to objc_id` first.
• Removed default values for send_message's restypeandargtypes keyword arguments. Every send_message call now needs to have its return and argument types set explicitly. This ensures that all arguments and the return value are converted correctly between (Objective-)C and Python.
• Disallowed passing more argument values than there are argument types in argtypes. This was previously allowed to support calling variadic methods - any arguments beyond the types set in argtypes would be passed as varargs. However, this feature was easy to misuse by accident, as it allowed passing extra arguments to any method, even though most Objective-C methods are not variadic. Extra arguments passed this way were silently ignored without causing an error or a crash. To prevent accidentally passing too many arguments like this, the number of arguments now has to exactly match the number of argtypes. Variadic methods can still be called, but the varargs now need to be passed as a list into the separate varargs keyword arugment. #174
• Removed the rubicon.objc.core_foundation module. This was an internal module with few remaining contents and should not have any external uses. If you need to call Core Foundation functions in your code, please load the framework yourself using load_library('CoreFoundation') and define the types and functions that you need. #175
• Removed the ObjCMethod class from the public API, as there was no good way to use it from external code. #177

Misc

• #143, #145, #155, #158, #159, #164, #173, #178, #179