[Bf-python] 32/64-bit binary Python add-ons

[Brecht Van Lommel]

> On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Thomas Krijnen <t.krijnen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Currently python add-ons are installed in subfolder, say ./2.65/, of the
>> user's home directory. No differentiation is made for 32- and 64 bits
>> versions of Blender, which I guess is absolutely fine for the vast majority
>> of add-ons. But some add-ons might depend on native modules that are
>> compiled for a specific architecture, these add-ons will break if a user
>> installed both the 32 bits and 64 bits version of Blender. I know native
>> add-ons are not of importance for most users, but are there any plans to
>> work around this limitation? I am working on a native importer add-on myself
>> for the IFC file format, for reference see:
>> http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html Thanks

It should be possible to distribute both 32 and 64 bit modules in a
single addon, and detect automatically which one needs to be loaded.
Though I'm not sure it's very important to support users installing
both 32 and 64 bit Blenders, I don't know anyone who intentionally
does that. If they are trying to use the addon in the wrong bitness
you could give an error message. However having a "universal binary"
type system where you bundle both 32 and 64 bit in the same addon
should work well in this case.

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 6:14 AM, HartsAntler <goatman.py at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas makes a good point.  I'd like to use Cython for my blender
> extensions, but currently there is no easy way to provide binaries for all
> platforms, and the issue he points out about 32 vs 64bits.

Regarding compiling binaries for many platforms in general, that
indeed gets complex. But what can we do about this?

Brecht.