[Numpy-discussion] Is anyone knowledgeable about dll deployment on windows ?

[David Cournapeau]

Eloi Gaudry wrote:
> David, I think that what Christoph pointed here applies to the msvc 
> built libraries only (I need to build the whole python/extensions using 
> msvc).
>   

Ok, I did not understand that point. Do you know if the patch discussed
in 4120 has been applied to 2.6.4 ? 

> May I ask you what re the "clashes between extensions" you were 
> referring to in your previous answer ? Have you already encountered such 
> issues ?
>   

If every python package starts to put its extensions (*.pyd) into a
directory, what happens when two different packages have an extension
with the same name (e.g. package foo has a package multiarray.pyd) ? I
would also be really annoyed if a 3rd party extension starts polluting
my C:\Python26.

> I'm wondering how it could break things asp roviding libraries in an 
> unique location is a known and common practice.

The problem is that numpy does not "own" C:\Python*, and it is not
expected that projects start dumping their stuff there. It usually
"works" on windows because each applications is independent of each
other. But here, numpy extends python, so we cannot just do as we please
- especially to deal with this whole manifest stupidity. Given that even
MS has implicitly recognized how broken manifests were (they are giving
it up for VS 2010), I don't think it worths spending time on this issue
which may well be unsolvable in a reliable way anyway. AFAIK, the
related issue of broken "install for me" python installers on vista and
windows 7 has not been solved yet.

cheers,

David