[Pythonmac-SIG] Python C extensions that depend on dynamic libraries

[Nicholas Riley]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 09:53:10PM +0100, Jack Jansen wrote:
> If Bob is right (and I think he is) then you can probably fix this by 
> using "g++" in stead of "ld" or "gcc" as the linker command for your 
> Python extension.

Distutils doesn't properly support C++ until Python 2.3; for earlier
versions you have to do various bizarre things to force it to link on
various platforms.

> As to the dylib/so issue: that's my stupidity. Back when OSX came out I 
> was under the impression (don't know where I got it) that both .dylib 
> and .so were "legal" extensions for dynamic libraries on OSX. As .so 
> was the standard on most unixen, and for some reason Python's configure 
> seemed to pick that I never spent a second thought on it.
> 
> I'm not sure what we'll do for 2.4. Either go to whatever is the 
> standard on OSX (I haven't a clue whether there is a standard for 
> plugins), or come up with one ourselves (.pysomethingorother).

You're not the only one to pick .so; Apache plugins in
/usr/libexec/httpd also end with .so, and are also MH_BUNDLE format.

Tcl uses MH_DYLIB and .dylib, which is bizarre; anyone know about any
examples from other scripting languages?

I think .bundle is likely to cause more confusion than not; something
with Python in the name (akin to .pyd on Windows) seems like a much
better idea, perhaps ".pyext" or ".pymod"?

-- 
=Nicholas Riley <njriley at uiuc.edu> | <http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley>