I've got shared libraries working on Windows and Linux -- without any
LD_LIBRARY_PATH nonsense, or any .so file rewriting. I have not had a
chance to try this on OS X, however. If there's anybody out there who has
experience wrestling with the Mac OS linker (hi, Bob! <wink>) has a chance
to try it out and maybe tweak it a little bit, I'd appreciate it.
The code is in the subversion trunk now, and the source includes a
tests/shlib_test subdirectory that you can change to and run "setup.py
test" to build/link/test, e.g.:
cd tests/shlib_test
PYTHONPATH=../.. python setup.py test
This just verifies that the basic linking works, i.e., whether my guesses
for the linker options in build_ext.py were correct. The second test is to
verify that it works from a different directory:
cd ..
PYTHONPATH=..:shlib_test python -c "import hello"
If this works without crashing, then the dynamic linking works even from a
different directory.
Based on my limited guesswork, the final test is the one most likely to
fail on OS X (assuming the link step succeeded, and I'm not sure it
will!). Rename the test directory temporarily:
mv shlib_test something_else
PYTHONPATH=..:something_else python -c "import hello"
mv something_else shlib_test
If this works without a bit of hacking, I'll be rather surprised, but
*very* pleased. If all three tests work without any changes to the source,
it's probably a bug. ;) (Specifically, it probably means setuptools fell
back to static linking, and thus isn't having any dynamic link problems.)
The basic idea of what I'm doing here is that I try to set the runtime
library search path of each extension (that depends on a shared library in
the project), to include the current directory *at runtime*, then make a
Python wrapper for the extension that temporarily changes the current
directory while doing the import.
The tricky bit -- if I understand correctly -- is that OS X has no concept
of a runtime library search path, so what this probably *should* be doing
is specifying something like "-dylib_file
libhellolib.dylib:./libhellolib.dylib" in the link options for the 'hello'
extension. What I'm not clear on is whether this is actually allowed by
the linker, or if it even does what I think it does in the first
place. Even if it's allowed and does the right thing, I have a sneaky
suspicion that perhaps the path will be converted to an absolute path at
link time, rather than leaving the './' in place, given the general
reputation for deviousness possessed by the Mac OS linker. :)
On the other hand, perhaps it's possible to fudge the paths in the dylib
once it's built, such that the './' is in the file? Any thoughts or
suggestions would be welcome.
In a couple of weeks I'll have a chance to play around with this on a Mac
myself, but since I'm starting from scratch (zero Mac experience
whatsoever), I'm hoping maybe someone more experienced could provide some
degree of guidance by then. Thanks.
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