py2exe to generate dlls?

Question

Is there a way using py2exe or some other method to generate dll files instead of exe files?

I would want to basically create a normal win32 dll with normal functions but these functions would be coded in python instead of c++.

Answer 1

I think you could solve this by doing some hacking:

• Take a look at the zipextimporter module in py2exe . It helps with importing pyd-files from a zip.
• Using that, you might be able to load py2exe's output file in your own app/dll using raw python-api. (Use boost::python if you can and want)
• And, since py2exe's outputfile is a zip, you could attach it at the end of your dll, making the whole thing even more integrated. (Old trick that works with jar-files too.)

Not tested, but I think the theory is sound.

Essentially, you reimplement py2exe's output executable's main() in your dll.

Answer 2

I doubt that py2exe does this, as it's architectured around providing a bootstrapping .exe that rolls out the python interpreter and runs it.

But why not just embed Python in C code, and compile that code as a DLL?

Answer 3

I am not aware of py2exe being able to do that, as I believe that it does not actually make object symbols out of your Python code, but just embeds the compiled byte-code in an executable with the Python runtime).

Creating a native library may require a bit more work (to define the C/C++ interface to things) with the Python-C API. It may be somewhat easier using Elmer for that.

Answer 4

For posterity, I was able to use Elmer to successfully generate a usable DLL recently. Their site has an example of building a DLL wrapper that loads python code. It is pretty cool because you can change the python code on the fly to change the DLL behavior for debugging.

Unfortunately, for me, I wanted a portable DLL that would work without installing python. That part didn't didn't quite work out of the box. Rather than repeating all the steps, here is a link to the answer with the steps I took: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24811840/3841168. I did have to distribute python27.dll, elmer.dll and a couple of .pyd's along with my .dll; an appropriated .net runtime was also needed since the python27.dll is not usually statically linked. There may be some way around including a boatload of dll's, but I didn't mind distributing multiple DLLs, so I didn't dig into it too much.

Answer 5

It looks like it is possible to generate a COM DLL from py2exe:

http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/Py2exeAndCtypesComDllServer

  23     my_com_server_target = Target(
  24     description = "my com server",
  25     # use module name for ctypes.com dll server
  26     modules = ["dir.my_com_server"],
  27     # the following line embeds the typelib within the dll
  28     other_resources = [("TYPELIB", 1, open(r"dir\my_com_server.tlb", "rb").read())],
  29     # we only want the inproc (dll) server
  30     create_exe = False
  31     )