[Python-Dev] hook for standalone executable

[Thomas Heller]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:

> Skip Montanaro wrote:
>
>> It wasn't me.  I agree it seems a tad fragile, however it will probably be a
>> lot easier than coming up with a "portable" way for the interpreter to know
>> its size.  I'd suggest a command line flag but I don't think that's going to
>> fly either.
>
> I recommend to drop the requirement that simple appending of .zip file
> needs to work, and suggest to use platform-specific mechanisms on each
> platform. These mechanisms should arrange to patch a variable,
> Py_EmbeddedZipfile. Normally, this variable is NULL. If a zipfile is
> appended, this variable changes its value to point to the zipfile (it
> should probably point to the zip directory, or some such).
>
> So in essence, a proper linking step is executed. There should be no
> dependence on native tools to perform this linking, instead, it should
> be implemented in pure Python.

Isn't it possible to parse the executable file format, looking for the
location where the Py_EmbeddedZipfile variable is located, and change
it's value?  That's what I understand when you say 'patch', and I
wouldn't call this 'linking'.

Thomas