[Python-Dev] ctypes and powerpc (original) (raw)

Thomas Heller theller at ctypes.org
Fri Nov 24 20:19:54 CET 2006

I'd like to ask for help with an issue which I do not know how to solve.

Please see this bug http://python.org/sf/1563807 "ctypes built with GCC on AIX 5.3 fails with ld ffi error"

Apparently this is a powerpc machine, ctypes builds but cannot be imported because of undefined symbols like 'ffi_call', 'ffi_prep_closure'.

These symbols are defined in file Modules/_ctypes/libffi/src/powerpc/ffi_darwin.c. The whole contents of this file is enclosed within a

#ifdef ppc ... #endif

block. IIRC, this block has been added by Ronald for the Mac universal build. Now, it seems that on the AIX machine the ppc symbols is not defined; removing the #ifdef/#endif makes the built successful.

We have asked (in the SF bug tracker) for the symbols that are defined; one guy has executed 'gcc -v -c empty.c' and posted the output, as far as I see these are the symbols defined in gcc:

-D__GNUC__=2 -D__GNUC_MINOR__=9 -D_IBMR2 -D_POWER -D_AIX -D_AIX32 -D_AIX41 -D_AIX43 -D_AIX51 -D_LONG_LONG -D_IBMR2 -D_POWER -D_AIX -D_AIX32 -D_AIX41 -D_AIX43 -D_AIX51 -D_LONG_LONG -Asystem(unix) -Asystem(aix) -D__CHAR_UNSIGNED__ -D_ARCH_COM

What should we do now? Should the conditional be changed to

#if defined(ppc) || defined(_POWER)

or should we suggest to add '-D__ppc__' to the CFLAGS env var, or what? Any suggestions?

Thanks, Thomas

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