distutils and ctypes

[Robert Kern]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Robert Kern schrieb:
>>> Not sure it's stupid, but I wonder why you want to use ctypes. What's
>>> wrong with extension modules?
>> What's wrong with ctypes? They're both valid, useful approaches to connect to C
>> libraries.
> 
> See the original posting. Distutils doesn't support building arbitrary
> shared libraries, but does support building extension modules.
> 
> Furthermore, extension modules are more type-safe and more expressive
> than loading shared libraries through ctypes. IMO, you may consider
> using ctypes as a last resort - if you have the chance for a
> well-engineered solution, write a compiled wrapper.

To which I say that doing the type-checking and error handling is much easier in
Python than using the C API. Add to that the tediousness of the edit-compile-run
cycle of C and the finickiness of refcounting.

There's nothing *wrong* with either approach. They're just different and have
different strengths and weaknesses. Some of those weaknesses are remediable (say
by using the bdist_shlib command that the OOF2 project implemented) and some aren't.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco