[Distutils] linking modules to a shared library

[Bob Ippolito]

On Oct 3, 2005, at 10:56 AM, Stephen Langer wrote:

>>> Is it possible to create libBase portably with distutils?  It's
>>> possible to do it on Linux by  subclassing build_ext.build_ext and
>>> explicitly using self.compiler.compile() and
>>> self.compiler.link_shared_lib() to build the shared library before
>>> calling build_ext.build_ext.build_extensions().  But the same thing
>>> on Mac OS X only creates libBase.so, whereas I need it to create
>>> libBase.dylib.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I don't know if this is possible, although I'd guess it is not.
>>
>
> That's too bad.  Is there a reason for it?  I'd volunteer to work on
> modifying distutils so that it can build a .dylib, but I am not an
> expert on library formats.  I don't really know the difference
> between a .so and a .dylib, except that one of them works and the
> other doesn't.  Can someone point me in the direction of a good
> reference on the topic?

The most portable way is to not build a libBase at all.  Build a  
Python extension that has all the functionality from libBase  
available in it as a data structure with function pointers, and get a  
reference to that from everything that depends on libBase  
functionality.  Take a look at what Numeric's C API does, for example.

-bob