[Python-Dev] Location of .so files (Was: Sharing expat instances)

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 10:14 PM 12/15/2005 +0100, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > Right; the question is why not just EXEC_PREFIX "/lib/python" VERSION
> >  instead.  What benefit does the separate directory offer?
>
>I can only guess: it's primarily a matter of tidiness.
>
> > Note that the distutils, when installing a package containing C
> > extensions, will install to site-packages under sys.exec_prefix; it
> > does not separate the C extensions into special alternate library
> > directories.
>
>Yes, that's inconsistent. One way to make it consistent would be to
>honor lib-dynload; the other to get rid of lib-dynload. I cannot see
>how one of these option is better than the other (nor can I see
>what the relevance for the expat discussion is, so I changed the
>subject).

The relevance to "sharing expat instances" was Fredrik's original question 
about placement of the shared library for cElementTree.  The question 
wasn't whether to get rid of lib-dynload in general, but whether there was 
any reason to do something other than just making ElementTree a 
distutils-installed package with the C extensions inside, the way normal 
distutils-installed packages are.

In any case the discussion is probably moot by now if ElementTree is now 
already built as part of the core.