Re: [openbabel-scripting] Re: "did not load properly"

[Geoffrey H. <ge...@ge...>]

On Nov 30, 2005, at 1:57 PM, S Joshua Swamidass wrote:

> It will help knowing exactly how these delayed dynamic libray loads
> are made. Why aren't they all already part of the _openbabel.so?

The _openbabel.so is merely some "glue" code to allow the  
openbabel.py module to access the C++ library. So there are actually  
several dynamic library loads beyond just _openbabel.so. For example,  
libopenbabel.so is loaded.

The delayed loads are for the individual file format dynamic  
libraries. The OB-2.0 library structure separates them from the main  
library -- there are plenty of users who want use of the libopenbabel  
library but not necessarily all of the file format translators.

This library structure works just fine for C, C++, and the Perl  
wrapper AFAICT. And it works for me on Mac OS X with Python. I'm not  
sure what's different about Linux Python, or who can help with this  
necessarily.

> Do you think we coudl statically link them? Where is the code that  
> loads
> them dynamically?

You don't want to statically link them. In fact, there are problems  
with the static builds of Open Babel because the linking is tricky.

The C++ code that loads the file formats is in src/ 
dlhandler_unix.cpp. It has no error messages like the ones you  
report, which is why I don't know what to debug. :-(

-Geoff