[Python-Dev] Static builds on Windows

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Thomas Heller wrote:
> I'm lost in these symbols.  It seems, the DL_EXPORT symbol is already
> deprecated, and public functions should be, and are, declared
> PyAPI_FUNC.  

That might well be. My reference to DL_EXPORT was from memory, and I
was too lazy to look up the current macro usage. Looking again.

> OTOH, the only way to define PyAPI_FUNC as
> __declspec(dllexport) is to define Py_ENABLE_SHARED and Py_BUILD_CORE.
> And isn't Py_ENABLE_SHARED mutually exclusive with Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED?

Right. Why again did you want to define Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED? I would
think that you can define it and still build a static library.

> Which makes the exe slightly larger, because of the import table
> section.  I have yet to figure out if extensions can link to these
> functions - normally they expect the functions in the pythonxy.dll
> module, and not in the (say) python_static.exe.

Yes. You will need to provide an import library for the final
executable, and you need to call this import library python24.lib.
Then, extensions should pick it up automatically through the
#pragma comment.

Existing binary extensions are not affected - although it might
be possible to provide  a stub python24.dll which reexports all
symbols from <interpreter>.exe. This would be needed only if
extension modules are needed.

If you want to disable dynamic loading at run-time, you could offer
a patch that allows to disable dynamic loading - either at the C
API or even exposed to Python. One implementation of this function
could garble _PyImport_Filetab, replacing certain entries with
SEARCH_ERROR, e.g. through

PyImport_DisableExtension(".pyd");

Re-enabling a disabled extension is probably not needed.

Regards,
Martin