[lxml-dev] missing symbol xsltProcessOneNode (was: Building lxml 2.1.2 on windows)

[Stefan Behnel]

Cserna, Zsolt \(IT\) wrote:
> Yesterday I've discovered that the symbol in question (xsltProcessOneNode)
> is not exported on windows in libxslt, and also missing from .h files. Is
> it a public method? In unix .so and in windows static .lib file all the
> functions are exported so in these situations the dynamic linking is
> possible.

I just checked the libxslt sources and it is missing from the header
files, everywhere back to at least 1.1.11. So it is not a public function.

The call was introduced into lxml to implement XSLT extension elements. I
don't remember how I found the function at the time, apparently not
through the official API docs.

Note that it's not static in the libxslt sources, although it is only used
in transform.c. So I assume that it was at least considered for being made
public at the time it was written. So there is still space for a post to
the libxslt list.


> So I think the solution for this error would be either:
> - You could remove the dependency of xsltProcessOneNode from lxml. :)

That would be the right thing to do, as this problem means that we can't
currently support older libxslt versions, even if the function becomes
public in a new release.

I definitely take patches, but failing contributions, I will have to find
a different way to implement the apply_templates() method in the
XSLTExtension class, or drop the feature all-together for now. Dropping
apply_templates() will however reduce the value of custom XSLT elements
considerably.


> Since libxslt is open source, we can do the modification ourselves and
> have the "patched" version but I think it could be useful for the other
> people who want to link dynamically to libxslt.

Yes, this is a temporary solution, but only for users like you who build
their own customisable libxslt.

Stefan