Is there something like AC_CHECK_LIB for python setup.py build instructions?

Question

I have a python package that builds its own extension module. currently I'm doing all the compilation in setup.py as an ext_module, but I really need AC_CHECK_LIB type capability - is there something like this for setup.py, or do I need to write a autoconf for my module?

Specific case here is that quite a few distros now have iconv included in libc, but I still need to support distros where -liconv needs to be passed to gcc. How can I check if iconv functionality is included in libc or not?

Should I skip doing all this through setup.py, and use autoconf?

Thanks!

Answer 1

From my poking around, it doesn't look like there's much you can do. You might have luck using autoconf to generate setup.py, or you could use automake and libtool and do the whole thing with autofoo. Automake provides a macro AM_PATH_PYTHON that sets a whole pile of useful variables and gives the following example for declaring an extension module:

pyexec_LTLIBRARIES = quaternion.la
quaternion_la_SOURCES = quaternion.c support.c support.h
quaternion_la_LDFLAGS = -avoid-version -module