I want to use the 64 bit version of python but run some code inside a spawned process that uses the 32 bit version. Is there an official way to do this, or can anybody make a recommendation about the cleanest way to do this? If someone has a better solution to the problem I describe below, I'd appreciate hearing that too. I'm using python 2.7, but could go to 3.x if that has better support for this.
My program interacts with two different commercial libraries by using ctypes to execute functions inside their DLLs. One library only exists in a 32 bit version. The second library has both 64 and 32 bit versions. The code was initially developed for a 32 bit platform, but now I need to support a user on a 64 bit machine as well. I've learned that ctypes can only interact with libraries which match the version of python that is running --- 32 bit python can use 32 bit DLLs, 64 bit python can use 64 bit DLLs, so when I'm running on a 64 bit machine with one 64 bit library and the other at 32 bits, I can't use the 32 bit library. I believe that the solution is to have both win32 and x64 versions of python installed, and then execute the win32 code inside of a new process which uses the win32 version of Python. I'm already using multiprocessing to run that code inside a new process because the two libraries have conflicts and need to run in separate memory space. If I could just specify that I want the new process to use a different version of the interpreter I think I'd be all set, but I don't see a way of doing that. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list