Calling Julia compiled library from Python

General Usage
1

As described in the blog post “” and implemented in PackageCompiler.jl, it is possible to compile Julia programs statically into a shared library. However, are there any examples of then calling this compiled library (.so file) from Python? Would it be the same as Python calling a compiled C library?

My question comes from a place of ignorance. Specifically, I’m unclear about:

  • What a .so file actually is
  • If Python cares about the source language of a .so file
  • What types of interfaces does a .so file allow for

I will be trying to answer these sub-questions myself and have rephrased them as a StackOverflow question, but I thought I would ask here first and document my learning journey.

1 Like
2

By now, one mainly needs to figure out how to add a C extension in python I think:
https://github.com/JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl/pull/26
The other issue I run into when creating that PR was likely fixed by: https://github.com/JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl/pull/122
So the only difference from other .so should be, that you need to make sure to initialize the Julia runtime, which got a lot easier with the above PR!

1 Like
3

This is amazing! I don’t fully understand it do my aforementioned ignorance, but hopefully after digging into this topic I’ll be able to review/test the PR and give you meaningful feedback.

4

If you want to use Python ctypes, I don’t think this PR is enough. See: init_jl_runtime does not work with Python ctypes · Issue #144 · JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl · GitHub

For a complete example using Python ctypes, see: AOT compiling using PackageCompiler - #8 by tkf

2 Likes
5

Just in case you are not aware of pyjulia. I know it’s not what you asked for but it is the trivial way of calling julia from python.

6

I’m interested in whether there’s been any progress on this? Are there any nice introductory guides/blogposts about calling compiled Julia libraries from Python? Is it currently easy or hard to do this?

7

pyjulia works really well. It just doesn’t AOT.