[Python-Dev] Global interpreter lock/import mechanism

[Joerg Budischewski]

Hi,

I am one of the authors of the python binding for the OpenOffice' 
component model UNO( see http://www.openoffice.org and 
http://www.budischewski.com/pyuno/python-bridge.html).

First of all, let me say, that is real fun to work with python C API and 
its documentation.

However, there are still some open questions, for which I haven't found 
an answer in the documentation.

1) I can't find an API call to get to know, whether the current thread 
has the global interpreter lock or not. ( A recursive lock would also help).

Some background: UNO objects are also reference counted, when they get 
destructed, they may need to PY_DECREF python references. However, the 
OpenOffice object's dtor might either be called with or without global 
interpreter lock.

I currently workaround this by delegating the PY_DECREF to a new thread, 
however, which has the defined state (it does not have the lock, so it 
must acquire it), but this is quite inefficient.

2) I would like to hook into the python import mechanism in order to 
introduce new classes. I currently do this by replacing the 
__builtin__.__dict__["__import__"] with my own version, which delegates 
to the original function and in case of failure tries to lookup a UNO type.

This allows e.g. by writing

from com.sun.star.uno import XComponent

to elegantly create such UNO types.

However, I think, the replace-__import__-function is quite a nasty 
solution, I would rather like to have an API for this. Is there an API I 
have overlooked (or is it planned to have something like that ? ).

3) The Python-UNO bridge can be used within the python process or within 
the office process itself ( so called UNO components). For the latter, 
the binding initializes python by calling Py_Initialize().

As you might know, OpenOffice.org comes as a binary (not in source) even 
on unix platforms. But I don't want to decide at buildtime, which Python 
version the user should use (and actually I don't want to ship python), 
instead I want to reuse a python version, which already exists on the 
system.

But currently, the python unix buildprocess does not create a shared 
library, only a static lib (while on windows a shared library gets built).

Are there any plans to add also a shared libs for unix  ?

Thx in advance,

Joerg