Keywords: dist

### 3.3.3 Preprocessor options

Three optional arguments to `Extension` will help if you need to specify include directories to search or preprocessor macros to define/undefine: `include_dirs`, `define_macros`, and `undef_macros`.

For example, if your extension requires header files in the include directory under your distribution root, use the `include_dirs` option:

      Extension("foo", ["foo.c"], include_dirs=["include"])

You can specify absolute directories there; if you know that your extension will only be built on Unix systems with X11R6 installed to /usr, you can get away with

      Extension("foo", ["foo.c"], include_dirs=["/usr/include/X11"])

You should avoid this sort of non-portable usage if you plan to distribute your code: it's probably better to write your code to include (e.g.) `<X11/Xlib.h>`.

If you need to include header files from some other Python extension, you can take advantage of the fact that the Distutils install extension header files in a consistent way. For example, the Numerical Python header files are installed (on a standard Unix installation) to /usr/local/include/python1.5/Numerical. (The exact location will differ according to your platform and Python installation.) Since the Python include directory--/usr/local/include/python1.5 in this case--is always included in the search path when building Python extensions, the best approach is to include (e.g.) `<Numerical/arrayobject.h>`. If you insist on putting the Numerical include directory right into your header search path, though, you can find that directory using the Distutils `sysconfig` module:

      from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_inc
      incdir = os.path.join(get_python_inc(plat_specific=1), "Numerical")
      setup(...,
            Extension(..., include_dirs=[incdir]))

Even though this is quite portable--it will work on any Python installation, regardless of platform--it's probably easier to just write your C code in the sensible way.

You can define and undefine pre-processor macros with the `define_macros` and `undef_macros` options. `define_macros` takes a list of `(name, value)` tuples, where `name` is the name of the macro to define (a string) and `value` is its value: either a string or `None`. (Defining a macro `FOO` to `None` is the equivalent of a bare `#define FOO` in your C source: with most compilers, this sets `FOO` to the string `1`.) `undef_macros` is just a list of macros to undefine.

For example:

      Extension(...,
                define_macros=[('NDEBUG', '1')],
                               ('HAVE_STRFTIME', None),
                undef_macros=['HAVE_FOO', 'HAVE_BAR'])

is the equivalent of having this at the top of every C source file:

      #define NDEBUG 1
      #define HAVE_STRFTIME
      #undef HAVE_FOO
      #undef HAVE_BAR