Static DLL

[Ash Kapur]

Hi,

I have an Win32 app that already loads a static dll (e.g. links with the
.lib, so
autoloads the dll when it starts). Using Dev Studio on 98.

I am trying to embed python20 into this app, so that I can use it to call
some
of the functions in the dll to test them.  The embedding went smoothly, I
can pass
command lines and file names to python and it executes them.

I used SWIG to create wrappers for some of the dll functions I want to call,
that also
went quite smoothly.

The problem is when I do an "import  dllname" it seems to load a new copy of
the dll,
(or at least there is a second set of static data at different places, and
breakpoints etc
do not work when the code is called from python).

Does anyone know of any way I can get python to know of my dll without doing
an
import, so that the already-loaded dll is used ? It would be a pain to have
to go back
to my existing app and change the architecture, as the dll exports lots of
functions.

Thanks in advance

Ash Kapur