Using Fortran libraries from Python?

[Berthold Höllmann]

Carl <phleum_nospam at chello.se> writes:

> I have experimented with f2c and swig-generated wrappers to create python
> modules from Fortran files. 
>
> I think I'm missing something when I'm building the Python module, because
> when I import the built module the Python interpreter returns the
> following:
>
>>>> import LDSsobol
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "LDSsobol.py", line 4, in ?
>     import _LDSsobol
> ImportError: /usr/lib/libf2c.so.0: undefined symbol: MAIN__
>
> This is how I built LDSsobol:
>
>> gcc -c LDSsobol.c
>> gcc -c LDSsobol_wrap.c -I/usr/include/python
>> gcc -shared LDSsobol.o LDSsobol_wrap.o -l f2c -o _LDSsobol.so
>

Hello Carl,

Googleing for "libf2c.so.0: undefined symbol: MAIN__" I found only 8
hits, some links broken, but also

<http://www.physics.orst.edu/~bertrand/slatec/jnislatec/JNI_Slatec.html>

where I found:

Currently users of f2c will probably encounter the following message:
"libf2c.so.0: undefined symbol: MAIN__ ". Again, the culprit is that
all references must be resolved, and libf2c.so unfortunately contains
a reference to some dummy function. Fortunately the fix is simple,
include the following snippet in your C native source (in our example
mynativecalls.c):

int  MAIN__( )
 {  return(0);
}

Another solution (not tested) could be to use "-lg2c" instead of
"-lf2c". As I understand it, the g77 runtime library is derived from
the f2c runtime library. An even better (in my opinion) solution would
be to use "f2py" from <http://cens.ioc.ee/projects/f2py2e/>, a tool to
wrap python (and C) code for python.

Regards
Berthold
-- 
bhoel at web.de / http://starship.python.net/crew/bhoel/