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[Python-Dev] buildin vs. shared modules

Thomas Heller theller at python.net
Fri Oct 17 13:56:48 EDT 2003 
"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.net> writes:

> A few things come to mind:
>
> What's the cost of mapping the world (all those entry points) at startup?
>
> You have to rebuild all of the main dll just to do something to one
> component. To me, that's maybe the biggest single issue.

Hm. How often do you hack the C code of the extension modules included
with Python?

> Are app users/programmers going to have a bloat perception? How many of them
> really understand that a dll is mapped and not loaded at startup?
>
> IMO, it contradicts the unix way of smaller, compartmentalized is better.
> It's not unix we're talking about, but it still makes sense to me, whatever
> the OS.

Maybe unix solves all this, but on Windows it's called DLL Hell.

> On the plus side, it does make some debugging easier if you're working on
> extension dlls: fewer sources to have to point Vis Studio at.

That's never been a problem for me. It always finds the sources itself,
at least for extensions built with distutils (because distutils in debug
builds passes absolute pathnames to the compiler).

> On a related side note: has anyone done any investigation to determine which
> few percentage of the extensions account for 99% of the dll loads? Maybe
> there's no such pattern, but experience suggests there probably is and that
> subset might be a better candidate than the whole world.

That might be.

Thomas
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