[Numpy-discussion] Is anyone knowledgeable about dll deployment on windows ?

[Jon Wright]

David Cournapeau wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>     My head hurt trying to understand dll management with windows. I 
> wanted to find a sane way to use dll for numscons, but I can't see how 
> to do this, so I was wondering if anyone on this ML had any deep 
> knowledge on how to install dll, and reuse them with python extensions ? 
> The problem is the following:
>     - you have some dll (say MKL) in a path (say C:\program files\MKL).
>     - how do you tell another dll (more exactly a python extension, a 
> .pyd) to look for mkl dll into the MKL path ?

Hi,

To be honest I'd be nervous about spreading your depedencies all over 
the disk, the potential interactions go as n^2. According to msdn there 
is a function which might work:

"SetDllDirectory: Adds a directory to the search path used to locate 
DLLs for the application."
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686203.aspx

Perhaps this is only for vista/xp? Otherwise you might have to copy the 
mkl dll into the "directory from which the application loaded". This 
would seem like a better choice, but I do wonder where that is for python.

Hope this helps. I'm certainly not an expert, but keen to try to support 
your work on help the masses access optimised libraries.

Best,

Jon

> 
> It seems that there is no rpath-like capability on windows, and the only 
> way to load dll is to put them into some windows directory, or to put 
> the dll path into PATH. Is it really the only way ?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> David
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