[Python-Dev] DRAFT: python-dev Summary for 2006-01-01 through 2006-01-15

[Thomas Heller]

Tony Meyer <tony.meyer at gmail.com> writes:

> -------------------------------------
> Adding ctypes to the standard library
> -------------------------------------
>
> Thomas Heller suggested that ctypes be included in core Python
> (starting with 2.5).  The common response was that while ctypes is a
> useful, popular, mature module, it does make it very easy to get a
> core dump, which violates the guideline that if you get a core dump
> it's a bug in Python or in a third party extension or you're doing
> something harebrained.  On the other hand, it was pointed out that the
> dl module suffers from the same problem, and is included without any
> warnings (the documentation was later fixed to include warnings).
>
> Martin v. Löwis suggested making ctypes a dynamically loaded module
> (ctypes.pyd), so administrators could remove it, and
> I could also make it a separate option in the Windows installer, so
> administrators could opt out of installing it.  Everyone seemed happy
> with prominent warnings in the documentation, and so this is how it
> was checked in.

Well, it is *not* yet checked in.  The current state is that ctypes uses
GPL'd tools to build libffi, and those can't be committed into Python SVN.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-January/059937.html

Currently I tend to agree with Martin and drop the idea for now, but
this probably doesn't belong into your summary ;-).

Thomas