Pat Lynch <plync...@gmail.com> added the comment: ok, that's fair enough if most usage of ctypes is from people accessing system libraries :)
I wouldn't have thought my usage was that weird though (given the strength of using python for unit testing). In local tests, adding a function CDLL::ForceUnloadDll (which just calls FreeLibrary(self._handle)) seems to work well. I haven't done intensive testing though at this point. I could be missing something though. thanks, Pat. On 16 April 2012 14:45, Martin v. Löwis <rep...@bugs.python.org> wrote: > > Martin v. Löwis <mar...@v.loewis.de> added the comment: > > In principle, it should be possible (but perhaps not desirable, see below) > to call FreeLibrary in a CDLL's __del__. However, since this would be a new > feature, it can't go into 2.7. Patches are welcome; make sure to support > both FreeLIbrary and dlclose. > > There is a general issue with closing/freeing DLLs: if they are still > referenced somewhere (e.g. in an atexit function, a C++ virtual method > table, or on the call stack of another thread), then a later access to the > code will crash the interpreter. In a typical DLL today (including all > Python extension modules), the likelihood of crashes is close to 100%. For > that reason, it's probably not a good idea to have ctypes auto-close DLLs; > instead, it should be an opt-in mechanism. > > For most ctypes uses, closing is irrelevant, since people typically access > system libraries that are independently loaded anyway, so closing them > would not have any effect. > > ---------- > nosy: +loewis > > _______________________________________ > Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> > <http://bugs.python.org/issue14597> > _______________________________________ > ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue14597> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com