Building Python 2.4 on machines that do not support dynamic loading

Robert McLay

I have been trying to build python on Cray X1. As far as I can
tell it does not support dynamic loading. So the question is:

How to build 2.4 without dynamic loading?

That is: can I build 2.4 where all the extensions are archived in
libpython2.4.a as a static library?

Building on the Cray X1 is slow, so I have been trying to also
build it under Linux without dynamic loading since it
configures/builds so much faster.

I edited the configure script so that it doesn't know that dlopen
works. The file "pyconfig.h" undefines HAVE_DYNAMIC_LOADING
HAVE_LIBDL and so on. Under linux it still builds .so files
but it gives the following message for all .so files:

*** WARNING: importing extension "dl" failed with
exceptions.AttributeError: 'module' object has no
attribute 'load_dynamic'

It seems like it is possible to build python without dynamic
loading as someone build python 2.3 on the X1. For various
reason I need 2.4, it just not clear what the trick is.

I have done some google group and web searching without success
so I'm asking all you experts to shine some light in this dark
corner.

Dec 4 '05 #1

Martin v. Löwis

Robert McLay wrote:

I have been trying to build python on Cray X1. As far as I can
tell it does not support dynamic loading. So the question is:

How to build 2.4 without dynamic loading?
Make sure HAVE_DYNAMIC_LOADING isn't defined; configure should detect
this automatically.
That is: can I build 2.4 where all the extensions are archived in
libpython2.4.a as a static library?

Certainly: Edit Modules/Setup to your needs.

Regards,
Martin

Dec 4 '05 #2