Compiling C++ code using Python interpreter running under windows shell

Question

My environment is:

Windows 7. PyDev IDE (eclipse). Python 2.7.

I want to compile and test some code I write in C++ (in the future, this code will be generated by a Python script). I need to get to compile a simple .c file for being used as a python extension.

Right now my code is:

/*
file: test.c 
This is a test file for add operations.
 */
float my_add(float a, float b)
{
    float res;
    res = a + b;
    return res;
}

And the .py file:

import subprocess as sp
import os
class PyCompiler():
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.file = name
        self.init_command = r"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat"
        self.compiler_command = r"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\cl.exe"
        sp.call(self.init_command + " " + self.file)

    def compile(self):
        alfa = sp.call(self.compiler_command)
        print(alfa)

TestCode = PyCompiler(r"C:\Python27\CodeGenerator\src\nested\test.c")
TestCode.compile()

If I launch this script, I get:

Which means I got an error in the method PyCompiler.compile, since the return of subprocess.call is not 1.

Can you provide some guidance on this issue?

Do you know any other way of doing this?

Answer 1

I actually managed to solve the problem by installing MinGW and using it to compile my C code. My python code for this is:

import subprocess as sp
import os
import importlib

my_env = os.environ

Class init:

class PyCompiler():
        def __init__(self, name_in, module, dep_list):
            self.file = name_in
            self.dep = dep_list
            self.module_name = module
            self.compiler_command = r"python setup.py  build_ext --inplace -c mingw32 "
            ''' Here it goes the creation of the setup.py file: '''
            self.set_setup()

And class methods:

def compile(self):
    command = self.compiler_command
    self.console = sp.call(command, env=my_env)

def include(self):
    module = __import__(self.module_name)
    return module

def set_setup(self):
    dependencies = ""
    for elem in self.dep:
        dependencies = dependencies + ",'"+elem+".c'"
    filename = "setup.py"
    target = open (filename, 'w')
    line1 = "from distutils.core import setup, Extension"
    line2 = "\n"
    line3 = "module1 = Extension('"
    line4 = self.module_name
    line5 = "', sources = ['"+self.file+"'"+dependencies+"])\n"
    line6 = "setup (name = 'PackageName',"   
    line7 = "version = '1.0',"
    line8 = "description = 'This is the code generated package.',"
    line9 = "ext_modules = [module1])"
    target.write(line1 + line2 + line3 + line4 + line5 + line6 + line7 + line8 + line9)
    target.close()

And the execution code:

TestCode = PyCompiler(file, module, [lib])
TestCode.compile()
test = TestCode.include()

• file is the C file to compile.
• module is the name assigned to the python module created.
• [lib] is the list of aditional C dependencies.