Notes

sysconfig vs distutils.sysconfig

After installing CPython, two sysconfig modules are available:

• sysconfig

• distutils.sysconfig

A difference is the value associated with the EXT_SUFFIX and SO configuration variables.

		Linux	macOS	Windows
		CPython 2.7
SO	sysconfig	.so	.so	.pyd
	distutils.sysconfig
EXT_SUFFIX	sysconfig	None	None	None
	distutils.sysconfig
		CPython >= 3.5
SO	sysconfig	.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so	.cpython-37m-darwin.so	.pyd
	distutils.sysconfig			.cp37-win_amd64.pyd
EXT_SUFFIX	sysconfig			.pyd
	distutils.sysconfig			.cp37-win_amd64.pyd

Note

The EXT_SUFFIX was introduced in Python 3.4 and is functionally equivalent to SO configuration variable. The SO configuration variable has been deprecated since Python 3.4.

Note

The information reported in the table have been collected execution the following python snippet.

def display_ext_suffix_config_var():
    import platform
    import sys
    import sysconfig
    from distutils import sysconfig as du_sysconfig

    details = (platform.python_implementation(),) + sys.version_info[:3]
    print("%s %s.%s.%s" % details)
    print(" SO")
    print("  sysconfig           : %s" % sysconfig.get_config_var("SO"))
    print("  distutils.sysconfig : %s" % du_sysconfig.get_config_var("SO"))
    print(" EXT_SUFFIX")
    print("  sysconfig           : %s" % sysconfig.get_config_var("EXT_SUFFIX"))
    print("  distutils.sysconfig : %s" % du_sysconfig.get_config_var("EXT_SUFFIX"))


display_ext_suffix_config_var()