Yes, I've read that explanation, but I still don't see what the point of find_library() is. Are you trying to resolve a possibly ambiguous reference to a shared library to the one which is used by the Python interpreter? If that's the case (and that's what the code seems to do), how about calling it "find_library_used_by_python", and have another function, perhaps called "find_library", which, given a partial name like "foo", searches the LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or, on Darwin, the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH), if set, then the standard system locations, the, on Darwin, the DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH, to find a library called "libfoo.so.N" (or, on Darwin, "libfoo.N.dylib")? That would be very useful. Right now, I don't see the use case for find_library().

Bill

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Thomas Heller <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:

Thomas Heller <theller@ctypes.org> added the comment:

> The question is, which linker? I think it should be ld.so, which links "on
> demand", and does pay attention to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. I'm not sure what the
> point of find_library() is, otherwise.

The best explanation is in the python docs:
http://docs.python.org/lib/ctypes-finding-shared-libraries.html

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue2936>
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