[Python-Dev] buildin vs. shared modules

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Fri Oct 17 14:40:53 EDT 2003


> > The same argument applies to zlib -- but I could be swayed by the
> > counterargument that zlib is needed for zipimport bootrstrap purposes.
> > (Though is it? you can create zip files without using compression.)
> 
> No, it has nothing to do with zipimport's bootstrap.  When zlib is
> available, you can import from compressed zipfiles, when it's not
> available, you cannot. (Hopefully Just corrects me if I'm wrong)
> 
> Of course, uncompressed zipfiles would always work - and they may be
> preferred because they might be even faster.

Right.  Compression should be used to save network bandwidth, but in
general, these days, files on disk should be uncompressed.

> > Long ago, when I first set up the VC5 project, there were still some
> > target systems out there that didn't have a working winsock DLL, and
> > "import socket" or "import select" would fail there for that reason.
> > If this is no longer a problem, I'm +1 on this.
> 
> Not on the sytems that I work on. To be double sure, _socket could be
> rewritten to load the winsock dll dynamically. And maybe this becomes
> an issue again if IPv6 is compiled in.

I'd rather not have more Windows-specific cruft in the socket and
select module source code -- they are bad enough already.  Dynamically
loading winsock probably would mean that ever call into it has to be
coded differently, right?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



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