Python 2.0 naive question

[David Bolen]

"Fredrik Lundh" <effbot at telia.com> writes:

> David Bolen wrote:
> > So if Python first looks for a new export that only exists in the new
> > version, and aborts - as part of the import - if it doesn't find it,
> > it'll never call initXxxx in the 1.5.2 PYD and you avoid the crash.
> 
> That falls in the "break every existing Python extension" category
> in my previous post.

But none of them are going to work anyway (on Windows at least).

> > Crashing the whole process if you accidentally get a 1.5.2 PYD lying
> > around just seems really nasty.
> 
> Forcing everyone to rewrite their extensions is also really nasty,
> especially given that this is a windows-only problem (most other
> platforms have real shared libraries).

By rewrite you mean in lieu of recompile (again under Windows) right,
which has to be done anyway?  Yeah, that's a good point - it just
seems that given the severity of the problem it's worth a little
speciality code, which could be kept with the Windows-specific dynamic
loading code.  Heck, it could be code to just look at the import list
(requiring no coding change to the extension).

> Besides, if you're not going to use 1.5.2 any more, all you need
> to do is to remove the python15.dll file.  In other words, to make
> it crash, you need to have old extensions, AND an old Python
> installation, AND path variables set up to point to the old install.

I guess I'd considered it fairly common (particularly during any sort
of transition) to have both versions installed, but then again, that's
probably more a development setup than production.

> (and based on bug reports, I'd say you're more likely to find your-
> self on a Windows 98 box with Norton Antivirus 2000 version 6.10.20
> than on a box with multiple misconfigured Python installations ;-)

Touche.  :-)

--
-- David
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