Building Python using VC++ 6.0 or 5.0 ------------------------------------- This directory is used to build Python for Win32 platforms, e.g. Windows 2000 and XP. It requires Microsoft Visual C++ 6.x or 5.x and Platform SDK February 2003 Edition (Core SDK). You can download this SDK from http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/psdk-full.htm. (For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../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, python31.{dll, lib} in Release mode) 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: python31_d.dll, python_d.exe, pyexpat_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 _msi _msi.c. You need to install Windows Installer SDK to build this module. _socket socketmodule.c _testcapi tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c 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 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 building Tcl/Tk first. Following are instructions for Tcl/Tk 8.4.12. Get source ---------- In the dist directory, run svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tcl8.4.12 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tk8.4.12 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tix-8.4.0 Build Tcl first (done here w/ MSVC 6 on Win2K) --------------- cd dist\tcl8.4.12\win run vcvars32.bat nmake -f makefile.vc nmake -f makefile.vc INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads? Optional: run tests, via nmake -f makefile.vc test all.tcl: Total 10835 Passed 10096 Skipped 732 Failed 7 Sourced 129 Test Files. Files with failing tests: exec.test expr.test io.test main.test string.test stri ngObj.test Build Tk -------- cd dist\tk8.4.12\win nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.12 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.12 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads? XXX I have no idea whether "nmake -f makefile.vc test" passed or XXX failed. It popped up tons of little windows, and did lots of XXX stuff, and nothing blew up. Built Tix --------- cd dist\tix-8.4.0\win nmake -f python.mak nmake -f python.mak install bz2 Python wrapper for the libbz2 compression library. Homepage http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/ Download the source from the python.org copy into the dist directory: svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.3 And requires building bz2 first. cd dist\bzip2-1.0.3 nmake -f makefile.msc All of this managed to build bzip2-1.0.3\libbz2.lib, which the Python project links in. _sqlite3 Python wrapper for SQLite library. Get the source code through svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/sqlite-source-3.3.4 To use the extension module in a Python build tree, copy sqlite3.dll into the PC/VC6 folder. _ssl Python wrapper for the secure sockets library. Get the latest source code for OpenSSL from http://www.openssl.org You (probably) don't want the "engine" code. For example, get openssl-0.9.6g.tar.gz not openssl-engine-0.9.6g.tar.gz Unpack into the "dist" directory, retaining the folder name from the archive - for example, the latest stable OpenSSL will install as dist/openssl-0.9.6g You can (theoretically) use any version of OpenSSL you like - the build process will automatically select the latest version. You must also install ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/ as this is used by the OpenSSL build process. Complain to them . The MSVC project simply invokes PC/VC6/build_ssl.py to perform the build. This Python script locates and builds your OpenSSL installation, then invokes a simple makefile to build the final .pyd. build_ssl.py attempts to catch the most common errors (such as not being able to find OpenSSL sources, or not being able to find a Perl that works with OpenSSL) and give a reasonable error message. If you have a problem that doesn't seem to be handled correctly (eg, you know you have ActivePerl but we can't find it), please take a peek at build_ssl.py and suggest patches. Note that build_ssl.py should be able to be run directly from the command-line. build_ssl.py/MSVC isn't clever enough to clean OpenSSL - you must do this by hand. 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.