[Distutils] Disposition of C extensions and packages

[M.-A. Lemburg]

"A.M. Kuchling" wrote:
> 
> Questions:
> 
>         1) A general Python question about packaging style: Is mixing
>            C extensions and Python modules in one package tree a bad
>            idea?  It makes the whole tree platform-dependent, which is
>            probably annoying for sites maintaining Python installation
>            for different architectures.

I have been using that setup for two years now with all of
my mx extensions and so far it has been working great.

If you maintain packages with C extensions for several
platforms, you can simply install the packages under
the platform subdirs in /usr/local/lib/python1.5 -- one
copy for every platform. Disk space is no argument anymore
nowadays.
 
>         2) Another general question, this time o: how should this be
>            handled?  Should C extensions always be effectively
>            top-level, and therefore go into site-packages?  Should
>            there be an xml package holding .py files, and an X package
>            holding all the C extensions? (X = 'plat_xml',
>            'xml_binary', or something like that)

Just leave them in the package. I use a separate subpackage
for the C extension which the packages modules then import.
This makes mixed Python + C extensions and prototyping of
C APIs in Python very simple and straight forward.
 
>         4) Distutils question: is this a problem with the Distutils
>            code that needs fixing?  I suspect not; if the tools make
>            it difficult to do stupid things like mix .py and .so
>            files, that's a good thing.

I wouldn't like this; for a very simple reason: if someone
wants to provide a Python rewrite of a C module which works
as dropin replacement, the only way to handle this is by
having a .so file and a .py file with the same name in the
same directory. mxDateTime uses such a setup, for example.

Note that .so files are found before .py files, thus if
someone does have the .so file, Python will use the
C module and not the Python one.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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