The problem

Boost.Python is often used to interface c++ classes to python. It’s easy to use, handles c++ string and containers automatically and non-intrusive.

YouCompleteMe uses Boost.Python to export its c++ classes to python so users can use them in their ycm_extra_conf.py file. Recently, I encountered the following strange problem when using CompilationDatabase.GetCompilationFlagsForFile:

ArgumentError: Python argument types in^@
CompilationDatabase.GetCompilationInfoForFile(CompilationDatabase, unicode)^@
did not match pass:[c++] signature:^@
GetCompilationInfoForFile(YouCompleteMe::CompilationDatabase {lvalue},
std::string)^@

The solution

It’s strange that the c++ interface uses lvalue for the object for the first sign. But after digging into the problem, I find that every part of the ycm_extra_conf.py works as expected, except that the filename is a reference file chosen randomly from the compilation_commands.json. Then it turns out that python load json strings as unicode objects but the c++ part only accepts std::string, which is the real difference in the interface. after manually converting the json string to python string with str, the error disappeared.

So it seems that Boost.Python handles lvalue well, but has problems with unicode objects and std::string. Try to use always python string instead of unicode in Boost.Python interfaced c++ classes.