[Python-Dev] buildin vs. shared modules

Thomas Heller theller at python.net
Fri Oct 17 14:42:42 EDT 2003


Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>> "David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.net> writes:
>> 
>> > A few things come to mind:
>> >
>> > What's the cost of mapping the world (all those entry points) at startup?
>> >
>> > You have to rebuild all of the main dll just to do something to one
>> > component. To me, that's maybe the biggest single issue.
>
> [Thomas Heller]
>> Hm. How often do you hack the C code of the extension modules included
>> with Python?
>
> There's a small but important group of people who rebuild Python from
> source with different compiler options (perhaps to enable debugging
> their own extensions).  They often don't want to have to bother with
> downloading external software that they don't use (like bz2 or bsddb).

Well, couldn't there be a mechanism which allows to switch easily
between builtin/external?

>> > Are app users/programmers going to have a bloat perception? How
>> > many of them really understand that a dll is mapped and not loaded
>> > at startup?
>> >
>> > IMO, it contradicts the unix way of smaller, compartmentalized is better.
>> > It's not unix we're talking about, but it still makes sense to me, whatever
>> > the OS.
>> 
>> Maybe unix solves all this, but on Windows it's called DLL Hell.
>
> It's not DLL hell unless there are version issues.
> I don't think multiple extension modules contribute to that (they
> aern't in the general Windows DLL search path anyway, only
> pythonXY.dll is, for the benefit of Mark Hammond's COM support in
> win32all).

I tried to be funny but obviously failed ;-)

Although it smells a little bit like DLL hell.

Thomas




More information about the Python-Dev mailing list