[Python-Dev] why is mmap a builtin module on windows? (original) (raw)

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Wed Jan 23 09:01:32 CET 2008


Ralf Schmitt wrote:

Hi all,

I want to use the mmap module from python trunk with python 2.5. On Linux I can easily replace it, as it is a dynamically loaded module. On windows it is a builtin module and I fear that I must compile python on windows (or resort to some other ugly hack) What is the reason for mmap being a builtin module?

On Windows lots of modules are linked into the python main dll. The file PC/config.c contains a list of all modules. From the point of the maintainer it's much easier to link the modules into the main dll instead of creating standalone dlls. I also suspect that it's much faster because relocation is slow (see PC/dllbase_nt.txt). Martin or Mark can give you a better answer.

Why do you want to overwrite the existing module instead of using a different name like ralfmmap?

import ralfmmap as mmap sys.modules]'mmap'] = mmap

Christian



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