macOS Python as a ".so" file.

Hi. I am a total noob to programming on OSX so maybe i have missed something really obvious. I am helping out on a project that is porting to OSX. Python 2.4 is used as a scripting engine in the application. Normally in windows we load the python dll file. In OSX we need to build python to a .so file but when i build it with macports or manually i get a dylib file. I think i am going to have to manually hack the make file to get it to link as a so file but i just want to make sure there is no easier way or if someone could point me at another project that uses python in this way i could get some help from that.Thanks.