From: Robin Becker [mailto:robin@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk]
does this PEP address the location of .pyds and associated .dlls under win32?
Yes. Read the PEP. It addresses it, by saying that nothing special will be done.
If I have several separate extensions which depend on common .dlls there is always a problem under win32 if they go into separate areas. As I understand it if the dll is in the same directory as the pyd that uses it then all's well.
The PEP doesn't address this problem - if it's a problem now, it won't be fixed by the PEP. All the PEP does is make PYTHONROOT\lib\site-packages the "preferred" location, instead of the current PYTHONROOT. Do you currently put DLLs in PYTHONROOT? Probably not.
I have no objection to dlls and .dlls ending up in PYTHONROOT\lib\site- packages, but what about the associated .libs (for dlls/pyds) and real static .libs and where are we to install include files for exported apis. I haven't any objection to following the unix model as closely as possible, but what really stands out here is that the base install has its own special directories for DLLs and Libs etc. The extensions are really just extensions and could theoretically be installed or not.
This is a valid issue, appropriate for consideration by the distutils-sig, but it doesn't affect PEP 250. That PEP just alters the "root" location from which a distributed package should hang. It doesn't have anything to say about the internal organisation of that distribution, or about how the distribution manages to locate its resources (DLLs, documentation, resource files, whatever else). Hope this helps, Paul.