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Remove bundled libffi for OSX #72677
Description
| BPO | 28491 |
|---|---|
| Nosy | @ronaldoussoren, @ned-deily, @bitdancer, @zware, @koobs, @matrixise, @yan12125 |
| Superseder | |
| Files |
Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.
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GitHub fields:
assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2020-11-08.12:07:24.418>
created_at = <Date 2016-10-20.18:40:27.517>
labels = ['OS-mac', 'ctypes', 'type-feature', '3.7', 'build']
title = 'Remove bundled libffi for OSX'
updated_at = <Date 2020-11-08.12:07:24.417>
user = 'https://github.com/zware'bugs.python.org fields:
activity = <Date 2020-11-08.12:07:24.417>
actor = 'ronaldoussoren'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2020-11-08.12:07:24.418>
closer = 'ronaldoussoren'
components = ['Build', 'macOS', 'ctypes']
creation = <Date 2016-10-20.18:40:27.517>
creator = 'zach.ware'
dependencies = []
files = ['45157']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 28491
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 10.0
messages = ['279063', '279064', '279065', '279067', '279069', '279122', '279123', '289707', '379419', '380548']
nosy_count = 7.0
nosy_names = ['ronaldoussoren', 'ned.deily', 'r.david.murray', 'zach.ware', 'koobs', 'matrixise', 'yan12125']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '41100'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue28491'
versions = ['Python 3.7']
Activity
zware commentedon Oct 20, 2016
Here's a patch that at least allows _ctypes to be built against a Homebrew libffi and pass the test_ctypes. It is almost certainly not a complete patch, but may serve as a basis for something that will actually work.
matrixise commentedon Oct 20, 2016
I will test on my OSX (El Capitan)
yan12125 commentedon Oct 20, 2016
With this change pkg-config becomes mandatory on macOS, too. As Ned has mentioned in bpo-28207, pkg-config is not pre-installed with macOS.
ned-deily commentedon Oct 20, 2016
Yes, we shouldn't be depending on pkg-config being available. I am not at all keen on adding a dependency on a third-party library supplied by another distributor. What I would like to see is: (1) add libffi to the third-party libs built and used for the macOS installer build, which also means on all supported versions; (2) then, more generally, refactor the third-party lib builds (e.g. OpenSSL, SQLite, xz, ncurses, et al, and then libffi) out of the installer build script and provide an option to ./configure to allow the third-party libs to be built and used in a regular developer build as the absence of or lack of updates to them in macOS releases is a growing problem. At that point we can get rid of the bundled libffi source. At the moment, AFAIK, the presence of the bundled libffi source is not causing any problems so this isn't a critical problem, unlike the case with OpenSSL.
matrixise commentedon Oct 20, 2016
On my OSX with El Capitan and HomeBrew
Configuration:
env PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=$PWD-build
Compilation:
make
Tests:
./python.exe -c 'import ctypes'
Results:
ronaldoussoren commentedon Oct 21, 2016
Does the upstream libffi work reliably on OSX by this time?
The bundled version of libffi was extracted from PyObjC, and that copy is itself a patched version of the system libffi on OSX. The reason I don't use the system libffi is both that I don't want to rely on older version of libffi, and because the system libffi causes crashes in PyObjC's testsuite (which contains a lot of edge cases).
I haven't looked into using the upstream version of libffi yet. PyObjC's version of libffi is a fairly old fork of upstream libffi where support for other systems was removed and support for darwin/x86 (and later darwin/x86-64) as added. The former at a time that the upstream libffi didn't support darwin/x86 at all (and at a time that darwin/x86 itself wasn't available on consumer devices).
matrixise commentedon Oct 21, 2016
Hi Ronald,
As you can see in my message #msg279069 I have tested with the last version of libffi (installed with HomeBrew), so in this case, I think we can say "Yes" to your question, the current release of libffi works fine with OSX. Now, I can check more deeply and give you a feedback.
yan12125 commentedon Mar 16, 2017
Update: my pull request at libffi/libffi#288 is merged. Future libffi releases don't need pkg-config anymore. However, I guess the system copy won't be updated in near future.
ronaldoussoren commentedon Oct 23, 2020
added 41100 as a dependency because that switches to the system libffi (as a side effect of larger changes)
ronaldoussoren commentedon Nov 8, 2020
This was implemented in bpo-41100