Book Image

Expert Python Programming – Fourth Edition - Fourth Edition

By : Michał Jaworski, Tarek Ziadé
5 (1)
Book Image

Expert Python Programming – Fourth Edition - Fourth Edition

5 (1)
By: Michał Jaworski, Tarek Ziadé

Overview of this book

This new edition of Expert Python Programming provides you with a thorough understanding of the process of building and maintaining Python apps. Complete with best practices, useful tools, and standards implemented by professional Python developers, this fourth edition has been extensively updated. Throughout this book, you’ll get acquainted with the latest Python improvements, syntax elements, and interesting tools to boost your development efficiency. The initial few chapters will allow experienced programmers coming from different languages to transition to the Python ecosystem. You will explore common software design patterns and various programming methodologies, such as event-driven programming, concurrency, and metaprogramming. You will also go through complex code examples and try to solve meaningful problems by bridging Python with C and C++, writing extensions that benefit from the strengths of multiple languages. Finally, you will understand the complete lifetime of any application after it goes live, including packaging and testing automation. By the end of this book, you will have gained actionable Python programming insights that will help you effectively solve challenging problems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
14
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15
Index

Compiling and loading Python C extensions

The Python interpreter is able to load extensions from dynamic/shared libraries such as Python modules if they provide an applicable interface using the Python/C API. The definition of all functions, types, and macros constituting the Python/C API is included in a Python.h C header file that is distributed with Python sources. In many distributions of Linux, this header file is contained in a separate package (for example, python-dev in Debian/Ubuntu) but under Windows, it is distributed by default with the interpreter. On POSIX and POSIX-compatible systems (for example, Linux and macOS), it can be found in the include/ directory of your Python installation. On Windows, it can be found in the Include/ directory of your Python installation.

The Python/C API traditionally changes with every release of Python. In most cases, these are only additions of new features to the API so are generally source-compatible. Anyway, in most cases, they...