[Python] Building Extensions for Python in C

Question

I'm learning some of the more advanced features of Python (using 2.7 from repos), and one feature I want to learn is building extensions in C, but not many reliable tutorials exist online.  They are either outdated, or irrelevant (serving as ads for books).  The official documentation is very confusing as well; read it a few times and am still lost.  Is Python.h installed already with Arch, or is there a specifically needed package?  Must I do a custom build of python?

Answer 1

Yannick_LM wrote:
Just to be sure, by "official", you mean this doc:
http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html ?
I personally found it quite clear :)
You can still fall back to using swig if you don't mind trusting auto-generated code:
http://www.swig.org/tutorial.html
Exactly the documentation I was talking about.  I considered it official as it was hosted on their site along with all of the documentation for Python.  I'll go back and reread it a little more carefully, maybe give it a few days to "soak in."  Also, with SWIG (haven't looked just yet), is this a recommended option for an extension development system?  Auto-generated code always seems to be a big hit-or-miss, and I don't want to spend time learning how to use it if it's buggy.
>> Is Python.h installed already with Arch ?
Yes:
/usr/include/python3.1/Python.h
I am running Python 2.7, but after a quick look, I see it's in the same location.
>> Must I do a custom build of python?
I don't think that's necessary.
Thank goodness.  I was afraid of the time it might have taken to do this.  Thank you for your help so far, Yannick; it really pushed me forward.