[Python-Dev] SSL support in _socket (original) (raw)

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
13 Feb 2002 15:34:26 +0100

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal@lemburg.com> writes:

I thought that Modules/Setup is deprecated and replaced by the auto setup tests in setup.py ?

Not at all. It is just used less frequently.

Personally, I think that is a pity. Python binary distributions, by default, on Unix, should build as many extension libraries statically into the interpreter as they can without dragging in too many additional shared libraries. IOW, _socket should be compiled statically into the interpreter, which you cannot do with distutils (by nature).

The reason for linking them statically is efficiency: if used, the interpreter won't have to locate them in sys.path, they don't need to be compiled as PIC code, the dynamic linker does not need to bind that many symbols, etc; if not used, they don't consume any additional resources as they are demand-paged from the executable. Static linking is also desirable for frozen applications.

For those reasons, I hope that Setup.dist continues to be maintained.

Regards, Martin