Running Boost 1.40 ( Windows server 2003/XP, Visual Studio 2008) Given; #include<boost/python.hpp> struct Foo{ static int bar; }; int Foo::bar=3; BOOST_PYTHON_MODULE(foo){ boost::python::class_<Foo>("Foo",boost::python::init<>()) .def_readonly("bar",Foo::bar); } With Python 2.6.3 and 2.6.4 I get;

c:\Python26\python.exe -c "import foo" Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'Boost.Python.StaticProperty' object attribute '__doc__' is read-only

Also;

python Python 2.6.4 (r264:75708, Oct 26 2009, 08:23:19) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

...

...

import foo Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'Boost.Python.StaticProperty' object attribute '__doc__' is read-only import foo dir(foo.Foo) ['__class__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__hash__', '__init __', '__instance_size__', '__module__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr_ _', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__']

So importing foo for the second time succeeds but foo.Foo holds no bar With Python < 2.6.3 everything works as expected. See also http://mail.python.org/pipermail/cplusplus-sig/2009-August/014747.html