For modern C++, use cppyy: http://cppyy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
It's based on Cling, the C++ interpreter for Clang/LLVM. Bindings are at run-time and no additional intermediate language is necessary. Thanks to Clang, it supports C++17.
Install it using pip:
$ pip install cppyy
For small projects, simply load the relevant library and the headers that you are interested in. E.g. take the code from the ctypes example is this thread, but split in header and code sections:
$ cat foo.h
class Foo {
public:
void bar();
};
$ cat foo.cpp
#include "foo.h"
#include <iostream>
void Foo::bar() { std::cout << "Hello" << std::endl; }
Compile it:
$ g++ -c -fPIC foo.cpp -o foo.o
$ g++ -shared -Wl,-soname,libfoo.so -o libfoo.so foo.o
and use it:
$ python
>>> import cppyy
>>> cppyy.include("foo.h")
>>> cppyy.load_library("foo")
>>> from cppyy.gbl import Foo
>>> f = Foo()
>>> f.bar()
Hello
>>>
Large projects are supported with auto-loading of prepared reflection information and the cmake fragments to create them, so that users of installed packages can simply run:
$ python
>>> import cppyy
>>> f = cppyy.gbl.Foo()
>>> f.bar()
Hello
>>>
Thanks to LLVM, advanced features are possible, such as automatic template instantiation. To continue the example:
>>> v = cppyy.gbl.std.vector[cppyy.gbl.Foo]()
>>> v.push_back(f)
>>> len(v)
1
>>> v[0].bar()
Hello
>>>
Note: I'm the author of cppyy.