[Python-Dev] python2 and python3 and vim (original) (raw)

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Sun Nov 3 17:59:20 CET 2013

I came across this in the VIM documentation:

Vim can be built in four ways (:version output):
1. No Python support        (-python, -python3)
2. Python 2 support only    (+python or +python/dyn, -python3)
3. Python 3 support only    (-python, +python3 or +python3/dyn)
4. Python 2 and 3 support   (+python/dyn, +python3/dyn)

Some more details on the special case 4:

When Python 2 and Python 3 are both supported they must be loaded dynamically.

When doing this on Linux/Unix systems and importing global symbols, this leads
to a crash when the second Python version is used.  So either global symbols
are loaded but only one Python version is activated, or no global symbols are
loaded. The latter makes Python's "import" fail on libraries that expect the
symbols to be provided by Vim.

I've never played with embedding Python. Does this make sense to anyone who has? Is there some limitation in our embedding and/or import machinery here, or is this more likely to be a shortcoming on the VIM side?

Mostly I'm asking out of curiosity in hopes of learning something; I doubt I'll have enough motivation to make time to work on solving this.

--David

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