[Distutils] Re: [PSA MEMBERS] packages in Python

[Michel Sanner]

On May 21, 10:24am, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> Subject: Re: [PSA MEMBERS] packages in Python
> [Problem with dynamic extensions in packages being platform dependent]
>
> I haven't followed the thread too closely, but was alarmed by
> the recent proposals of splitting .so files out of the "normal"
> package distribution under a separate dir tree. This is really
> not such a good idea because it would cause the package information
> stored in the extension module to be lost (you can't have two
> top-level packages with the same name on the path: only the first one
> on the path will be used).
>
> Here is the scheme I would use: create a subpackage for the
> extension and have it take care of importing the correct
> shared lib for the platform Python is currently running on.
> The libs themselves could be placed in plat-<platform> subdirs
> of that subpackage and the __init__.py would then load the
> shared lib using either a sys.path+__import__() hack or
> thread safe via imp.load_dynamic().
>
> An even simpler solution is installing the whole package under
> .../python1.5/plat-<platform> separately for each supported
> platform rather than putting it under site-packages. [Disk space
> is no argument nowadays and its likely that different platforms
> need different Setup files anyway.]
>
As someone who maintains Python for several unix based architectures I am not
concerned with disk space but really file duplication with the obvious risc to
run out of sync.

Also, the plat-<platform> scheme is far from being able to capture the
complexity of this world. SGI alone has 3 ABIs o32 n32 n64 multiplied by MIPS1,
MIPS3, MIPS4 instruction sets yimes IRIX5.x, IRIX6.2, IRIX6.3, IRIX6.4, IRIX6.5
and many of these combinations are incompatible. !

Finally, why have a $prefix and a $ exec_prefix if it is not used to split
plateform dependent stuff from platform independent.

And we should really take this dot distutil-sig :)

-Michel