[vtk-developers] Re: Python installation issues: need feedback.

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

Another idea that might work well just struck me.

>>>>> "PR" == Prabhu Ramachandran <prabhu at aero.iitm.ernet.in> writes:

    PR>  (1) Put PY_LIB in
    PR> $prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/vtk_python/ However, this
    PR> is not sufficient since the linker cannot see these libraries
    PR> and because the modules link to each other they will not be
    PR> imported.  To work around this we could simply insert
    PR> $prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/vtk_python/ into
    PR> /etc/ld.so.conf or add this path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  This
    PR> will work perfectly.

Instead of putting PY_LIB in

$prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/vtk_python/

We can put them in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/lib (or whereever it installs
the libraries) and make symbolic links to these inside
$prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/vtk_python/

I can get setup.py to do this easily I think.

However there is one catch.  Win32 does not need the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
(or eqwuivalent) setting and will work fine if we put
libvtk*Python.dll into $prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/vtk_python/
(or the correct equiv under win32).  Therefore my question is this:

 Can CMake be told that it should install PY_LIB into the usual place
 *if* the platform is *not* WIN32.  If WIN32 the setup.py will install
 the libs in the right place (I'll take care of that part).  Can this
 be done?

 I'm sure it should be possible to do.  So, if we can modify the
 install scripts (or is it CMakeLists.txt?) to do this then the python
 installation should be all set.


Comments?

Thanks.
prabhu