Unload shared library inside ctypes loaded shared library

Question

I\'m calling a so file from my python script. As far as I understand, I don\'t really need to free shared library that is opened in python using ctypes. However, inside my s

Answer 1

example to unload dependencies

Tested on Linux Fedora 32, Python 3.7.6 (anaconda), ctypes 1.1.0, g++ 10.2.1. Dependency is OpenCv (Version 4.2). More details here: How can I unload a DLL using ctypes in Python?

code.cpp

#include 
#include  


extern "C" int my_fct(int n)
{
    cv::Mat1b mat = cv::Mat1b(10,8,(unsigned char) 1 );  // change 1 to test unloading
    
    return mat(0,1) * n;
}

Compile with g++ code.cpp -shared -fPIC -Wall -std=c++17 -I/usr/include/opencv4 -lopencv_core -o so_opencv.so

Python code

from sys import platform
import ctypes


class CtypesLib:

    def __init__(self, fp_lib, dependencies=[]):
        self._dependencies = [CtypesLib(fp_dep) for fp_dep in dependencies]

        if platform == "linux" or platform == "linux2":  # Linux
            self._dlclose_func = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('').dlclose
            self._dlclose_func.argtypes = [ctypes.c_void_p]
            self._ctypes_lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(fp_lib)
        elif platform == "win32":  # Windows
            self._ctypes_lib = ctypes.WinDLL(fp_lib)

        self._handle = self._ctypes_lib._handle

    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        return self._ctypes_lib.__getattr__(attr)

    def __del__(self):
        for dep in self._dependencies:
            del dep

        del self._ctypes_lib

        if platform == "linux" or platform == "linux2":  # Linux
            self._dlclose_func(self._handle)
        elif platform == "win32":  # Windows
            ctypes.windll.kernel32.FreeLibrary(self._handle)


fp_lib = './so_opencv.so'

ctypes_lib = CtypesLib(fp_lib, ['/usr/lib64/libopencv_core.so'])

valIn = 1
ctypes_lib.my_fct.argtypes = [ctypes.c_int]
ctypes_lib.my_fct.restype = ctypes.c_int
valOut = ctypes_lib.my_fct(valIn)
print(valIn, valOut)

del ctypes_lib