With the introduction of sys.setdlopenflags, the dl 
module got some special usefulness, carrying the 
flags used in this function. On the other hand, the 
dl module is not available on every platform where 
dlopen is. Alpha, for example, is not able to import 
the dl module because sizeof(int) is not equal to 
sizeof(long), as the assertion in initdl() ensures.

I can think about two obvious solutions:

a) Move RTLD_* flags to some standard module (sys?)

b) Make some of the functionality in dlmodule.c 
optional, instead of the whole module.

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If you need dlfcn.h constants without having the dl module,
you need to run h2py for dlfcn.h. Moving the constants to
sys is not acceptable.

OTOH, allowing to use dlmodule on all systems seems
reasonable. I believe the problem is that dl.call uses a
function type that has all arguments "long", and still
allows to pass char* and int. So moving the test into
dl_call might be appropriate. Would you like to prepare a patch?

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Sure... I'll build a patch and let you know.

Thanks!

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It's ready!! I've attached it to this bug.
 
Please, let me know if any change is needed.

Thanks!

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Looks fine; I'll apply it shortly.

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Thanks again for the patch, applied as

setup.py 1.74
ACKS 1.154
NEWS 1.344
dlmodule.c 2.19