how to create a python package with a dll/so file ?

[hbadi]

Hello,

I've been reading some stuffs last days about python module packaging, it's quite a mess to understand something clearly since there's a lot of package management tools like setuptools.

I have my own cmake file to generate my dynamic library file. I can't see how to write a very basic setup.py in which i only specify the dynamic library file to use. I found many examples/tutorials in which Extension/pybind11 python modules are used through the explicit definition of source files, but in my case i want to compile the dynlib by my own. Is there any simple setup.py to do the job ?

For example under windows i tried to write these setup.py but the dll is not copied...i only get the .egg file

from setuptools import setup, Extension
setup(
    name='mymodule',
    version='1.0',
    description='A Python package C++ (PyBind11)',
    data_files=[('lib\\site-packages\\', ["mymodule.dll"])],
)

python setup.py install

The website https://pybind11.readthedocs.io/en/stable/compiling.html do explain a lot of things but only where there's a list of cpp files, which is not my case that's why i manage the compiling using cmake.
I can use ext_modules = [Extension('pysparselizard', sources=[''])] but source files are needed.

It's not very clear...

Thansk for your help.

[LivelyLiz]

Did you find a solution? I am trying to find out the same thing but also mainly find resources for doing this with .py files...

[matte86]

I have a similar setup where I build my project with conan and cmake. The project is structured in a way so that I have:

• A shared cpp library
• A shared library containing the bindings with Python (as output of the pybind11 binding build process)

The best process I managed to implement so far is to build everythin from conan and cmake and then use the cmake install routine to create a specific python_package folder containing all my targets, placed in the proper directories. Inside my setup.py file I then have something like:

...
package_dir={"": "."},
package_data={'': ['*.so', "*.dylib"]},
...

I am not an expert of python binary packages and I am still playing around a lot. The process I implemented so far allows me to properly package shared libs into my python package but I am not entirely sure this approach is correct when it comes to distributing my package.

[GabrielJMS]

Hello @hbadi, did you find a solution for this?

[Deepak-98M]

waiting for a solution here as well, apparently the visual studio build tools do not help as they show error such as in my case 'sys/time.h' is not available, as it is especially for windows, i have a library that needs an additinal extension library which is in .c format and then converted to .so and not recognized.

[PhilipNelson5]

I've had success in the past, when working with SWIG, creating a python package from the compiled *.pyd files using a pyproject.toml file.

file structure

build/
    python/
        moduleName/
            moduleName.pyd
        LICENSE
        pyproject.toml

pyproject.toml

[project]
name = "moduleName"
license-files = ["LICENSE"]
version = "@PROJECT_VERSION@"
dependencies = []

[tool.setuptools]
packages = ["moduleName"]

[tool.setuptools.package-data]
moduleName = ["*.pyd"]

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools >= 77.0"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta

However, when I use this same approach with pybind11, I can import the module but none of the functions exist...

When I add the build directory to the python system path, sys.path.append("build/python/moduleName") it works like a charm.

When I pip install build/python, I get AttributeError: module 'moduleName' has no attribute 'foo'