Python DLL in Windows Folder

[Chris Mellon]

On Dec 23, 2007 12:27 PM, Markus Gritsch <m.gritsch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/12/2007, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:
> > Markus Gritsch wrote:
> > > why does the Python installer on Windows put the Python DLL into the
> > > Windows system32 folder?  Wouldn't it be more clean to place it into
> > > the Python installation folder beside the python.exe file?
> >
> > It's the easiest and best way to expose Python for 3rd party
> > applications and COM. The DLL is removed by the Windows Installer when
> > its usage counter drops to 0. There is no need to worry ;)
>
> I am not worrying about an orphaned DLL.  The Problem is that this way
> the Python DLL is being made available for 3rd party applications,
> which possibly need a version of Python which is compiled using
> another compiler.  We are embedding Python into our application which
> gets compiled using MSVC 8.0.  We like to link dynamically, so the
> Python interpreter is not statically linked into the program.  The
> Python DLL from the Python installer in the Windows system32 folder is
> compiled using MSVC 7.1.
>


What the python installer is doing is the Right Thing for making the
standard python dll available to third party applications.
Applications that want a specific version of a specific DLL should use
the mechanisms available for doing so, instead of relying on there
being a specific version of the python dll in the windows folder. This
is just general best practice on Windows.