Can a native extension support multiple modules?

Question

So in python native extension, is it possible to implement multiple modules in a single shared library? Then what would be the name of the shared library should be?

PyMODINIT_FUNC PyInit_foo(void) { PyModule_Create(...); }
PyMODINIT_FUNC PyInit_bar(void) { PyModule_Create(...); }

Should I name the library file foo.so or bar.so? and will import foo; import just foo or both foo and bar modules?

Answer 1

Yes you can. The easiest way is to create hardlinks named after each module for importlib to be able to find the module. The statement import <x> imports the module named <x> by looking for an exported PyInit_<x> function from <x>-*.so.

So say, you build as foo.so and create bar.so as a hardlink to foo.so. Your package structure would look like:

/mypackage/__init__.py
/mypackage/foo.so
/mypackage/bar.so -> foo.so # hardlink