findlibs

A Python package that searches for shared libraries on various platforms.

Usage

import findlibs
lib = findlibs.find("eccodes")

# If package name differs from library name use:
lib = findlibs.find(lib_name="odccore", pkg_name="odc")

Installation

pip install findlibs

Testing

git clone https://github.com/ecmwf/findlibs
cd findlibs
pip install -e ".[test]"
pytest

find

The module only contains the find() function.

def find(lib_name, pkg_name=None)

Returns the path to the selected library, or None if not found.

Arguments:

• lib_name str - Library name without the lib prefix. The name of the library to find is formed using lib_name and a platform specific suffix (by default ".so"). E.g. when lib_name is "eccodes" the library name will be "libeccodes.so" on Linux and "libeccodes.dylib" on macOS.
• pkg_name str, optional - Package name if it differs from the library name.

Returns:

str or None: Path to selected library

The algorithm to find the library is as follows:

• First, tries to find the library in an installed python module package with the given name, e.g. eccodeslib, eckitlib. Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_PACKAGE=yes.

• Next, tries the lib and lib64 directories under sys.prefix and $CONDA_PREFIX. Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_PYTHON=yes.

• Next, tries the lib and lib64 directories under the paths defined by the pkg_name + "_HOME" and pkg_name + "_DIR" environment variables. Both lowercase and uppercase versions are tested. E.g. if pkg_name is "eccodes" it will check the paths defined by $eccodes_dir, $eccodes_home, $ECCODES_DIR and $ECCODES_HOME. Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_HOME=yes.

• Next, tries to load the search paths from the user defined ~/.findlibs or ~/.config/findlibs/findlibs.conf INI configuration files. Then for all the user defined search paths, the lib and lib64 subdirectories are tried.

  Please note that only one of these files can exist. The configuration file can contain multiple search paths, but no relative paths or paths to files are allowed. The file can even be completely empty or can contain no paths at all. The file format is as follows:

  [Paths]
  /path/to/lib_directory
  

  Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_CONFIG_PATHS=yes.

• Next, tries the directories defined by the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH and $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables. Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_LD_PATH=yes.

• Next, tries the lib and lib64 directories under the following paths "/", "/usr/", "/usr/local/", "/opt/", "/opt/homebrew/" and "~/.local/". Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_SYS=yes.

• Finally, tries calling the ctypes.util.find_library function. Disable this search option by setting environment variable FINDLIBS_DISABLE_CTYPES_UTIL=yes.