forcing ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary() to reload library from file

Question

I have the following code

import ctypes
lib1 = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(\"./mylib.so\")
# modify mylib.so (code generation and compilation) or even delete it
         


        

Answer 1

Simplifying CristiFatis answer a bit, I wrote a close-library function. The following code can be used to develop in your shared library and call it (in the most recent version) from python.

import ctypes
def ctypesCloseLibrary(lib):
    dlclose_func = ctypes.CDLL(None).dlclose
    dlclose_func.argtypes = [ctypes.c_void_p]
    dlclose_func.restype = ctypes.c_int

    dlclose_func(lib._handle)

if __name__== "__main__":
    lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./mylib.so')

    # do things with lib_MyClass

    ctypesCloseLibrary(lib)

Just call ctypesCloseLibrary when you want lib to be reloadable by lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./mylib.so').