BUG: distutils: fix building mixed C/Fortran extensions

In SciPy we had a couple of cases where we build a Python extension
with C source files but linked against static libraries built from
Fortran code. Those should be using the Fortran linker, but this
was broken in 1.22.0 by gh-19713 (the PR that introduced C++ in NumPy).

This fixes a few issues in the `build_ext` command, and documents better
what is going on there.

Should close SciPy issues 8325 and 15414.

1 files changed, 23 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/numpy/distutils/command/build_ext.py b/numpy/distutils/command/build_ext.py
index 7040a2411..36a62eb1a 100644
--- a/numpy/distutils/command/build_ext.py
+++ b/numpy/distutils/command/build_ext.py
@@ -231,20 +231,36 @@ class build_ext (old_build_ext):
             l = ext.language or self.compiler.detect_language(ext.sources)
             if l:
                 ext_languages.add(l)
+
             # reset language attribute for choosing proper linker
+            #
+            # When we build extensions with multiple languages, we have to
+            # choose a linker. The rules here are:
+            #   1. if there is Fortran code, always prefer the Fortran linker,
+            #   2. otherwise prefer C++ over C,
+            #   3. Users can force a particular linker by using
+            #          `language='c'`  # or 'c++', 'f90', 'f77'
+            #      in their config.add_extension() calls.
             if 'c++' in ext_languages:
                 ext_language = 'c++'
-            elif 'f90' in ext_languages:
+            else:
+                ext_language = 'c'  # default
+
+            has_fortran = False
+            if 'f90' in ext_languages:
                 ext_language = 'f90'
+                has_fortran = True
             elif 'f77' in ext_languages:
                 ext_language = 'f77'
-            else:
-                ext_language = 'c'  # default
-            if l and l != ext_language and ext.language:
-                log.warn('resetting extension %r language from %r to %r.' %
-                         (ext.name, l, ext_language))
-            if not ext.language:
+                has_fortran = True
+
+            if not ext.language or has_fortran:
+                if l and l != ext_language and ext.language:
+                    log.warn('resetting extension %r language from %r to %r.' %
+                             (ext.name, l, ext_language))
+
                 ext.language = ext_language
+
             # global language
             all_languages.update(ext_languages)