compiling qt app extensions with distutils

Fri Jul 22 20:30:52 EDT 2011

On 22/07/11 21:37, strattonbrazil wrote:
>> Okay, your terminology was confused: you want to extend Python, not your
>> application.
>> Sorry, after I sent that e-mail, I realized I had already mixed up the
> terms, where I should have written "embedding".
>>> First of all, you don't technically need distutils: an extension module
>> is simply a shared library that you can build like any other library,
>> and I'm sure your build system can easily handle that. Then, you can
>> probably use bits of distutils to figure out where to install things to.
>> Hrmm, this seems like the most practical solution for me right now.
> It makes sense to embed python in my application like I originally
> planned, where I expose the individual functions I want to expose.
> Eventually if I actually want to provide the exposed functions as a
> library, I could actually just compile the application to a shared
> library instead of an executable (just not using the main function).
> The bindings in the C++ code are the same, correct? Only the way
> they're built seems different.

There's no difference between using C and C++. Obviously, you always
need the correct extern "C" declarations, but IIRC, Python's method
definition macros handle that.
You could convert your whole application to a Python extension module,
expose the main function to Python, and launch the program using a small
Python wrapper script. (Or you could embed Python in your application.)
>>> Lastly, depending on what your goals are, you might want to consider not
>> integrating Python with your application at all, but exposing what
>> functionality you want to expose to Python via dbus. You could write a
>> skeleton module that exposes dbus proxy objects to Python scripts /
>> modules to make life easier.