Building Python using VC++ 6.0 or 5.0 ------------------------------------- This directory is used to build Python for Win32 platforms, e.g. Windows 95, 98 and NT. It requires Microsoft Visual C++ 6.x or 5.x. (For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../PC/readme.txt.) All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.dsw" in MSVC++, select the Debug or Release setting (using Build -> Set Active Configuration...), and build the projects. The proper order to build subprojects: 1) pythoncore (this builds the main Python DLL and library files, python21.{dll, lib} in Release mode) NOTE: in previous releases, this subproject was named after the release number, e.g. python20. 2) python (this builds the main Python executable, python.exe in Release mode) 3) the other subprojects, as desired or needed (note: you probably don't want to build most of the other subprojects, unless you're building an entire Python distribution from scratch, or specifically making changes to the subsystems they implement; see SUBPROJECTS below) When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to their name: python21_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on. SUBPROJECTS ----------- These subprojects should build out of the box. Subprojects other than the main ones (pythoncore, python, pythonw) generally build a DLL (renamed to .pyd) from a specific module so that users don't have to load the code supporting that module unless they import the module. pythoncore .dll and .lib python .exe pythonw pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't pop up a DOS box _socket socketmodule.c _sre Unicode-aware regular expression engine _symtable the _symtable module, symtablemodule.c _testcapi tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c mmap mmapmodule.c parser the parser module pyexpat Python wrapper for accelerated XML parsing, which incorporates stable code from the Expat project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/ select selectmodule.c unicodedata large tables of Unicode data winreg Windows registry API winsound play sounds (typically .wav files) under Windows The following subprojects will generally NOT build out of the box. They wrap code Python doesn't control, and you'll need to download the base packages first and unpack them into siblings of PCbuilds's parent directory; for example, if your PCbuild is .......\dist\src\PCbuild\, unpack into new subdirectories of dist\. _tkinter Python wrapper for the Tk windowing system. Requires tcl832.exe from http://dev.scriptics.com/software/tcltk/downloadnow83.html Run the installer, forcing installation into dist\Tcl. Be sure to install everything, including the Tcl/Tk header files. zlib Python wrapper for the zlib compression library. Get the source code for version 1.1.4 from a convenient mirror at: http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ Unpack into dist\zlib-1.1.4. A custom pre-link step in the zlib project settings should manage to build zlib-1.1.4\zlib.lib by magic before zlib.pyd (or zlib_d.pyd) is linked in PCbuild\. However, the zlib project is not smart enough to remove anything under zlib-1.1.4\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild zlib.lib you need to clean up zlib-1.1.4\ by hand. bsddb Python wrapper for the BSD database 1.85. Requires db.1.85.win32.zip, from the "bsd db" link at http://www.nightmare.com/software.html Unpack into dist\bsddb. You then need to compile it: cd to dist\bsddb\Port\win32, and run nmake -f makefile_nt.msc This builds bsddb\Port\win32\db.lib, which the MSVC project links in. Note that if you're running Win9X, you'll need to run vcvars32.bat before running nmake (this batch file is in your MSVC installation). TODO: make this work like zlib (in particular, MSVC runs the prelink step in an enviroment that already has the correct envars set up). YOUR OWN EXTENSION DLLs ----------------------- If you want to create your own extension module DLL, there's an example with easy-to-follow instructions in ../PC/example/; read the file readme.txt there first.