[Python-Dev] buildin vs. shared modules

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Thomas Heller wrote:
> What is the rationale to decide whether a module is builtin or an
> extension module in core Python (I only care about Windows)?

I believe it is mostly tradition, on Windows: We continue to do
things the way they have always been done.

On Linux, there is an additional rationale: small executables and
many files are cool, so we try to have as many shared libraries as
possible. (if you smell sarcasm - that is intentional)

> To give examples, could zlib be made into a builtin module (because it's
> useful for zipimport), _sre (because it's used by warnings), or are
> there reasons preventing this?

I think that anything that would be reasonably replaced by third parties
(such as pyexpat.pyd) should be shared, and anything else should be part
of pythonxy.dll.

Regards,
Martin