[Python-Dev] AIX shared library support

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Bill Tutt wrote:
> 
> MAL wrote:
> 
> > Bill Tutt wrote:
> > >
> > > Is there any particular reason that dynload_aix.c doesn't use AIX's
> dlopen?
> > > >From what I can tell, libtool seems to use dlopen on AIX 3.xxx and AIX
> > > 4.xxx.
> >
> > > I was all set to integrate the \N{...} support into the Unicode-escape
> > > encoding, and dynamically load the hash table data in on demand, but
> > > dynload_aix only cares about module entry points and won't let you
> specify
> > > an explicit function name.
> 
> > Uhm, why do you need to go that deep into the internals
> > of the import mechanism ?
> 
> > Wouldn't is suffice to put the hash table into a _ucnhash module
> > which get imported on demand (the import mechanism would then
> > take care of the rest) ?
> 
> It would suffice, but it'd be less efficient (and more work) since I'd then
> have to access the data/hash functions through the normal PyObject
> mechanisms instead of directly as C functions. That is, I'm trying to avoid
> creating a PyString of whatever is inside the braces. (\N{SMILEY}). Then
> again, maybe I'm just being too performance sensitive.

You could pass a pointer to the char* via a PyCObject. 

I usually export the whole module C API via such an object and it works
great: you can rely on module import to get the magic right and
still have a C API around which you can call directly from
C -- without the need to wrap anything in Python objects.

FYI, mxODBC and mxDateTime are tied together using this mechanism;
look in the mxDateTime.h|c files for details.
 
> The import mechanism got redone weirdly, all of the ways of doing dynamic
> loading except AIX encode the idea that the function name must be preceeded
> by "init".
> Dynload_xxx.c is the wrong place to put that requirement. Whomever calls
> _PyImport_GetDynLoadFunc() should handle that issue.

That's to Greg's address, I guess ;-)
 
> Just as an FYI, the only problem I've found so far with my last patch was
> wrt handling Unicode characters with values in the UCS-4 code space. (Not
> that there are any yet, but the code must handle that case anyway, sine I
> don't want to have to go change it later.)

Why is there a problem there ? Python currently uses UTF16
as native format. UTF-16 surrogates are not supported though...
and probably won't be for a while.

I don't see much of a problem here.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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