Python as a shared library on Unix

[Brian E Gallew]

Then <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> spoke up and said:
> Paul Duffin <pduffin at mailserver.hursley.ibm.com> writes:
> 
> > Is it possible to build Python itself as a small executable and a
> > shared library, rather than an archive library which of
> > course results in a monolithic executable. 

Sure it is.  I've done it.  The problem is, doing this is even more
platform dependent than just building shared libraries.  When I did
it, it was a "by-hand" process, where I manually modified some files,
forced all object files to be relocatable code, manually converted
libpython.a to libpython.so.1.5.2, and so on.  What makes this
difficult is that some Modules want to reference things in libpython,
and sometimes it means linking the modules against -lpython, and
sometimes not.  It's ugly, and not for the faint of heart.  Further,
the utility of such a hack quickly became questionable for me,
considering that I'm never embedding python itself.

-- 
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| After all, why else would it support only single inheritance??    |
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