3.1.3 GNU Dynamic Loading

GNU dynamic loading supports (according to its "README" file) the following hardware and software combinations: VAX (Ultrix), Sun 3 (SunOS 3.4 and 4.0), Sparc (SunOS 4.0), Sequent Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. There is no reason to use it on a Sparc; I haven't seen a Sun 3 for years so I don't know if these have shared libraries or not.

You need to fetch and build two packages. One is GNU DLD. All development of this code has been done with DLD version 3.2.3, which is available by anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload, file "dld-3.2.3.tar.Z". (A more recent version of DLD is available via http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/DLD.html but this has not been tested.) The other package needed is an emulation of Jack Jansen's dl package that I wrote on top of GNU DLD 3.2.3. This is available from the same host and directory, file "dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z". (The version number may change -- but I doubt it will.) Follow the instructions in each package's "README" file to configure and build them.

Now configure Python. Run the "configure" script with the option -with-dl-dld=dl-directory,dld-directory where dl-directory is the absolute pathname of the directory where you have built the "dl-dld" package, and dld-directory is that of the GNU DLD package. The Python interpreter you build hereafter will support GNU dynamic loading.