Fixes#775.
Assignments of the form `Type.static_prop = value` should be translated to
`Type.static_prop.__set__(value)` except when `isinstance(value, static_prop)`.
Now that only one shared metaclass is ever allocated, it's extremely
cheap to enable it for all pybind11 types.
* Deprecate the default py::metaclass() since it's not needed anymore.
* Allow users to specify a custom metaclass via py::metaclass(handle).
In order to fully satisfy Python's inheritance type layout requirements,
all types should have a common 'solid' base. A solid base is one which
has the same instance size as the derived type (not counting the space
required for the optional `dict_ptr` and `weakrefs_ptr`). Thus, `object`
does not qualify as a solid base for pybind11 types and this can lead to
issues with multiple inheritance.
To get around this, new base types are created: one per unique instance
size. There is going to be very few of these bases. They ensure Python's
MRO checks will pass when multiple bases are involved.
Instead of creating a new unique metaclass for each type, the builtin
`property` type is subclassed to support static properties. The new
setter/getters always pass types instead of instances in their `self`
argument. A metaclass is still required to support this behavior, but
it doesn't store any data anymore, so a new one doesn't need to be
created for each class. There is now only one common metaclass which
is shared by all pybind11 types.
Dean Moldovan