[Distutils] cffi & Py_LIMITED_API

[Daniel Holth]

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 1:42 AM Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1 August 2016 at 05:27, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The next version of cffi will contain small changes to generate code
> > compliant with Python's Py_LIMITED_API:
> > https://bitbucket.org/cffi/cffi/commits/8f867f5a869f
> >
> > (although cffi itself is not, the extensions it generates will be).
>
> Very cool!
>
> > If we also add an appropriate supported tag to pip ~= cp3.abi3.manylinux1
> > and provide a way to name the generated DLL's appropriately, it may
> become
> > possible to reduce the burden of distributing cffi extensions, especially
> > for Windows. One compiled artifact should work on Python 3.2 and above.
>
> Aye, that would be very promising. I guess the first step would be to
> document the current steps involved in doing this manually? And then
> figure out what tweaks would be needed to setuptools and pip to allow
> it to be automated?
>
> As an initial stab at that:
>
> Status quo, on publication side:
>
> - require minimum cffi version 1.8
> - build with setuptools
> - postprocessing step to rename shared library/DLL
> - postprocessing step to regenerate renamed whl file with renamed SO/DLL
>

There wouldn't necessarily need to be renaming. build_ext command
determines the DLL extension. It could be patched or modified to read an
"I'm ABI3" flag on the Extension() object.

We could pass an ABI3 flag to bdist_wheel in the same way we ask for
universal 'py2.py3-none-any'. To be set if the wheel contained only ABI3
extensions, and ignored on py2.


> On consumption side:
>
> - requires "cp3.abi3" to be included at appropriate points in
> compatibility tag list
>
> Which would make the necessary changes be:
>
> - updating setuptools to somehow be Py_LIMITED_API aware when naming
> built extensions
> - updating wheel to somehow be Py_LIMITED_API aware when naming whl files
> - if necessary, updating pip's compatibility tag list
>
> Of those changes, only the "somehow be Py_LIMITED_API aware" sounds
> potentially tricky to me, as I'd be surprised if there was any way
> around requiring a new explicit setting in either setup.py or
> setup.cfg.
>

Any alternative to an explicit flag that I can think of would be too
magical to consider, as poor as trying to inspect library symbols for
manylinux1 compat in bdist_wheel itself.


> Regards,
> Nick.
>
> --
> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>
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