It's been observed a couple times recently ... distributing and compiling
extensions is a pain, especially on windows, when the main supported
compilers are not freely availble .. nor even commercially availble anymore.
What we need is a way to break out of this dependency. A way for python
extensions to be built using any C compiler and be able to target multiple
Python runtime version with a single binary build.
I believe I have such a solution.It is heavily influenced byt Java's Native
Interface, which achieved this independence since day one.
The technical details are too combersome to post here, so I added a page to
my projects's homepage detailing my proposal. If there is interest, I'd be
interested in working on the PEP and the implementation.The URL for the
proposal is http://jpype.sourceforge.net/pni.html
This solution may not be complete. Of multi-platform details might make some
suggestion impossible or impractical. Please take this proposal as a
starting point for a discussion.
I have a working prototype for steps 1 that I am using to implement JPype.
So this is not a pipe dream. it is real and functional.
Please leave tour comments here, or better yet on my blog at
http://jpype.blogspot.com .
Steve Menard
Author and Maintainer of JPype ( http://jpype.sourceforge.net )
