[Distutils] (extension) module dependencies in setuptools

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:50 PM 1/23/2006 -0800, Andrew Straw wrote:
>I would like to propose a feature for setuptools: runtime enforcement of
>dependencies specified at build time by setup.py. I appreciate that
>"pkg_resources.require('foo==1.0')" works, but this requires a tedious
>update of version numbers in affected source files every time you
>upgrade foo and rebuild the target package. I'm thinking, in particular,
>of extension modules built on a particular version of another package
>with its own C interface. Think matplotlib.backends._ns_backend_agg
>depending on numpy.

I'm getting close to starting on an overhaul of setuptools' experimental 
shared library support to allow dynamic linking to libraries included in a 
different egg than the one the extension is in.  When I do that, there's 
definitely going to be some inter-egg dependency checking of sorts, except 
it will be based on *exact* version numbers, because it will be tied to the 
egg version you linked against.

I suppose it's possible I could do something similar for other sorts of 
extensions, but it seems to me that the simple way to do inter-extension 
API checks in Python today is to have a .h supplied by one extension 
containing a version, and having a PyCObject you import from the target 
extension with a function pointer that gets the built version.  You then 
compare the API version you compiled against with the API version present 
at runtime.  The source code doesn't change; you're just verifying that the 
API version matches what you compiled against.

Notice that this doesn't require setuptools in order to be useful.  It's 
simply part of best practices for C extensions that provide a C API for 
other extensions to use.  Python itself uses this technique as well.


>I'm already attempting to dispel enough anti-egg sentiment (for reasons
>I don't understand) resulting from slight changes to setup.py.

Cognitive dissonance is sometimes a harsh taskmaster.  :)  Luckily my 
suggestion is entirely independent of eggs and setuptools.