naming convention: What does the 'm' mean in libpython3.5m.dylib

Question

I have python version 3.5 installed to a non-system directory. The name of libpython is: libpython3.5m.dylib. What does that last m character in the name mean?

Answer 1

The suffix refers to an ABI detail of the python library. In this case, m indicates that --with-pymalloc was used when your python interpreter was compiled. Other possible suffix characters include: d (--with-pydebug) and u (--with-wide-unicode).

More details on ABI tagging for extension modules can be found in PEP 3149.