Merged revisions 74862 via svnmerge from

svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk

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  r74862 | brett.cannon | 2009-09-16 20:24:45 -0700 (Wed, 16 Sep 2009) | 1 line

  Note in the intro to Extending... that ctypes can be a simpler, more portable solution than custom C code.
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Doc/extending/extending.rst

@@ -20,6 +20,13 @@ source file by including the header ``"Python.h"``.
 The compilation of an extension module depends on its intended use as well as on
 your system setup; details are given in later chapters.
 
+Do note that if your use case is calling C library functions or system calls,
+you should consider using the :mod:`ctypes` module rather than writing custom
+C code. Not only does :mod:`ctypes` let you write Python code to interface
+with C code, but it is more portable between implementations of Python than
+writing and compiling an extension module which typically ties you to CPython.
+
+
 
 .. _extending-simpleexample: