Re: [xml] python bindings on windows

[Hannu Krosing <hannu tm ee>]

Stéphane Bidoul kirjutas E, 04.11.2002 kell 12:30:
> Hi all,
>
> 4. Finally, I applied minor changes to setup.py to use 
> the correct path for includes and libraries, as well as to link
> with "libxml2" and "libxslt" instead of "xml2" and "xslt",
> and remove "m" and "z" from the libs.
>
> I tried to preserve the unix behaviour, and I can post
> my changes if someone is interested.
>
> Now, the packaging question.
>
> I would like to use the nice python distutils feature
> that creates a windows installer to make a binary distribution
> containing both the python bindings and the libxml and libxslt
> dlls. The question is where to install the dlls?

I dont, know where Igor's win32 installer puts them,  but I'd guess the
same place would be fine ;)

As for the .pyd, .py, .pyc files, the should preferrably be put under
corresponding python's  site-packages/ directory.

BTW, which version did you build for ?

What compiler did you use ?

Anyway, I'd like to try them, are your python modules available
somewhere ?


> Putting them in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32 would probably create
> many versioning headaches. A nice place that avoids all
> versioning conflicts, is to put them 
> in the same place as the libxml2mod.pyd and libxsltmod.pyd
> (in python/lib/site-packages, that is). The problem, is that
> you end up with the following files in the same place:
> libxml2.py, libxml2.dll and libxml2mod.pyd (and the
> same for xslt). 
>
> Now when you try "import libxml2", unfortunately, python first 
> tries to load libxml2.dll and fails since that one is not a python
> extension. The solution I found is to create the following
> directory structure in site-packages:
>
>   libxml2.py
>   libxmlmods/__init__.py
>   libxmlmods/libxml2mod.pyd
>   libxmlmods/libxml2.dll
>
> The only change necessary is then to write 
> "from libxmlmods import libxml2mod"
> instead of "import libxml2mod" in libxml2.py.

This seems to be a nice workaroud for the case when you want to have
many different libxml2.dll's , and should also work when you have
libxml2.dll in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32.

> That change is fairly straightforward, and should not break any
> existing code since (as I understand it) libxml2mod is normally 
> not imported directly. 

You could try to put libxml2mod.pyd in the directory libxml2mod and do
"from libxml2mod import *" in libxml2mod/__init__.py so you don't need
to change  libxml2.py at all.

> I find that solution very convenient, because in one 
> installer package, I can distribute the python bindings 
> together with their private copy of the libxml dlls: 
> easy to install and no risk of clashing with 
> preinstalled versions.
>
> If there is some interest for such an approach, 
> I can post the installer somewhere, so you can give it a try.

I would definitely like to try it.

--------------------
Hannu