Python libraries

[Phil Mayers]

On 24/07/13 10:19, Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
>
> On 23 Jul 2013, at 23:04, Phil Mayers <p.mayers at IMPERIAL.AC.UK>
> wrote:
>
>> On 07/23/2013 08:52 PM, Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
>>> Anyone have an idea about what the 'm' suffix is on some python
>>> libraries? e.g. libpython3.3m.so
>>>
>>
>> It signals that it was built with pymalloc. I believe other letters
>> are possible, to indicate other build-time options e.g. debugging
>> compiled in, unicode width. The idea, if I understand it correctly,
>> is to allow more than one installation of the same version of
>> python with these different build-time options, and this is
>> achieved with the namespacing symbol ("m" in this case)
>
> Ah, thanks.  Is this a new thing for python3?

I think so, but I'm not really using py3 much yet.

> The current configure script doesn't.  The most advanced it gets is
> using sys.prefix/exec_prefix/version.
>
> Is there a similar utility for python 2.x?

python 2.6 and 2.7 have python-config with the same interface; not sure 
about 2.5, don't have that installed anywhere. 2.4 definitely does not.

> As an aside, it looks like the module is not wholly compatible with
> Python 3, it still builds, but lots of mismatched types and undefined
> symbols.
>
> If anyone wants to have a go at fixing it doesn't look too hard. Most
> of the issues are in the martialing/un-martialing code.

Shudder; C-codebase supporting both py2 and py3 - no, I think I'll pass 
on that...