python mapscript broken?

[warmerdam]

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\warmerda>python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Feb 21 2008, 13:11:45) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import mapscript
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\osgeo4w\apps\Python25\lib\site-packages\mapscript.py", line 4, in <mo
dule>
    import _mapscript
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.
>>> ^Z


C:\warmerda>

The popup reports msSHPCloseFile could not be located in the dynamic link library libmap.dll. This is with mapscript-python 5.0.2-1 and mapserver 5.2.0-2.

[Mike Taves]

A related topic/solution is covered (twice!) in the MapServer documentation (​http://mapserver.org/MapServer.pdf, pages 59 and 673):

"Unable to load dll (MapScript): You can get this problem on Windows and in most cases it can be dedicated to a missing or an unloadable shared library. The error message talks about mapscript.dll but surely one or more of the dll-s are missing that libmap.dll depends on. So firstly you might want to check for the dependencies of your libmap.dll in your application directory. You can use the Visual Studio Dependency Walker to accomplish this task. You can also use a file monitoring tool (like SysInternal’s filemon) to detect the dll-s that could not be loaded. I propose to store all of the dll-s required by your application in the application folder."

I'd give this a try if I had the tools, but I don't have nor know how to use the MS dev tools. My guess is that mapscript-python (currently 5.0.2-1 for me) or related package has 1 or more outstanding dependencies.

[jef]

Apparently fixed.