[Tutor] Python with readline

[Erik Price]

On Wednesday, April 17, 2002, at 11:53  PM, dman wrote:

> No .so files?  They are always named libfoo.so, where 'foo' is the name
> of the library.

Not any that I could see.

> | And I believe my readline library is /sw/include/readline (if the /sw/
> | dir looks unfamiliar, it's the equivalent of /usr/local/ used by Fink,
> | the Unix ported package management app for Mac OS X).
>
> The .h is the "include" file.  It is C source that is required for
> compiling anything that uses the library.  The .so file is the "shared
> library" file.  It is the already-compiled implementation of the
> library.  The app (python in your case) will be dynamically linked
> against that .so when it runs.

Useful knowledge.  Why does it need to be source code -- couldn't this 
information just be placed into the shared library (.so) file?

> Stuff in /usr/share is typically just arbitrary data the app/lib uses
> as it runs.

Someone told me that the "setup.py" script automatically checks for the 
presence of GNU Readline.  I didn't even know about this script, I 
assumed that all you do is ./configure; make; make install.  So I looked 
at it, and then I looked at the ./configure script.  Nope, setup.py does 
not appear to be called by ./configure (although I would have assumed it 
was).  So I need to run setup.py myself.  This is interesting for two 
reasons --

1) setup.py is not an executable.  No reason it should be, but then, 
doesn't that assume that I have a working version of Python on my 
system?  Otherwise this "setup" script wouldn't work.  Fortunately I do, 
but if this was my first time building Python... well, it just seems 
strange.

2) the interface is not readily apparent.  Although running "python 
setup.py --help" does display a list of options, it does not display a 
list of COMMANDS that need to be given (as arguments?) with the setup.py 
script.  I didn't actually get a chance to look at the source code yet, 
to see if I can figure out what I'm supposed to do, but perhaps someone 
on this list is more familiar with setup.py and can tell me what I 
should be doing.

TIA,


Erik