## 3.1.2 SGI IRIX 4 Dynamic Loading

Only SGI IRIX 4 supports dynamic loading of modules using SGI dynamic loading. (SGI IRIX 5 might also support it but it is inferior to using shared libraries so there is no reason to; a small test didn't work right away so I gave up trying to support it.)

Before you build Python, you first need to fetch and build the `dl` package written by Jack Jansen. This is available by anonymous ftp from host ``ftp.cwi.nl`', directory ``pub/dynload`', file ``dl-1.6.tar.Z`'. (The version number may change.) Follow the instructions in the package's ``README`' file to build it.

Once you have built `dl`, you can configure Python to use it. To this end, you run the ``configure`' script with the option `-with-dl=directory` where directory is the absolute pathname of the `dl` directory.

Now build and install Python as you normally would (see the ``README`' file in the toplevel Python directory.)