If libnotmuch.so is installed to a path that is not searched by dlopen(3), we must import it using an absolute path because the Python bindings do not have the luxury of RPATH linking. So strip off the trailing directories from the install location and try CDLL with an absolute path. --- This is sort of a hack, but I don't know a less intrusive way to get libnotmuch.so from somewhere dlopen(3) doesn't already search. The absolute path version won't do the right thing in case of 'setup.py develop', otherwise we could use it in all cases. It may still make sense to make the absolute path version take precedence. An alternative would be to find libnotmuch.so using the notmuch executable. bindings/python/notmuch/globals.py | 19 ++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/bindings/python/notmuch/globals.py b/bindings/python/notmuch/globals.py index c7632c3..2473f04 100644 --- a/bindings/python/notmuch/globals.py +++ b/bindings/python/notmuch/globals.py @@ -24,7 +24,24 @@ from ctypes import CDLL, Structure, POINTER try: nmlib = CDLL("libnotmuch.so.3") except: - raise ImportError("Could not find shared 'notmuch' library.") + try: + # If Notmuch is installed to a location not searched by + # dlopen(3), we must import it using an absolute path. We + # can't just reset LD_LIBRARY_PATH because ld.so reads it when + # Python is starting and will not reread the environment. We + # assume the install directory structure has the form: + # + # /base-path/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/notmuch/globals.py + # + # so that we can get the library directory by stripping off + # the last four elements of the path. + import os.path + path = os.path.abspath(__file__) + for i in range(4): + path = os.path.dirname(path) + nmlib = CDLL(os.path.join(path, 'libnotmuch.so.3')) + except: + raise ImportError("Could not find shared 'notmuch' library.") from .compat import Python3StringMixIn, encode_utf8 as _str -- 1.8.2.1