Building Python using VC++ 7.1 ------------------------------------- This directory is used to build Python for Win32 platforms, e.g. Windows 95, 98 and NT. It requires Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 (a.k.a. Visual Studio .NET 2003). (For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../PC/readme.txt.) All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.sln" in MSVC++, select the Debug or Release setting (using "Solution Configuration" from the "Standard" toolbar"), 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: python24_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 _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 8.4.7; these should work for version 8.4.6 too, with suitable substitutions: Get source ---------- Go to http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/ and download tcl847-src.zip tk847-src.zip Unzip into dist\tcl8.4.7\ dist\tk8.4.7\ respectively. Build Tcl first (done here w/ MSVC 7.1 on Windows XP) --------------- Use "Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 -> Visual Studio .NET Tools -> Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt" to get a shell window with the correct environment settings cd dist\tcl8.4.7\win 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 On WinXP Pro, wholly up to date as of 30-Aug-2004: all.tcl: Total 10572 Passed 9869 Skipped 703 Failed 0 Sourced 129 Test Files. Files with failing tests: ioCmd.test Build Tk -------- cd dist\tk8.4.7\win nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.7 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.7 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads? XXX Our installer copies a lot of stuff out of the Tcl/Tk install XXX directory. Is all of that really needed for Python use of Tcl/Tk? Optional: run tests, via nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.7 test On WinXP Pro, wholly up to date as of 30-Aug-2004: all.tcl: Total 8421 Passed 6826 Skipped 1581 Failed 14 Sourced 91 Test Files. Files with failing tests: frame.test scrollbar.test textWind.test winDialog.test winWm.test winfo.test zlib Python wrapper for the zlib compression library. Get the source code for version 1.2.1 from a convenient mirror at: http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ Unpack into dist\zlib-1.2.1. A custom pre-link step in the zlib project settings should manage to build zlib-1.2.1\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-1.2.1\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild zlib.lib you need to clean up zlib-1.2.1\ by hand. bz2 Python wrapper for the libbz2 compression library. Homepage http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/ Download the source tarball, bzip2-1.0.2.tar.gz. Unpack into dist\bzip2-1.0.2. WARNING: If you're using WinZip, you must disable its "TAR file smart CR/LF conversion" feature (under Options -> Configuration -> Miscellaneous -> Other) for the duration. A custom pre-link step in the bz2 project settings should manage to build bzip2-1.0.2\libbz2.lib by magic before bz2.pyd (or bz2_d.pyd) is linked in PCbuild\. However, the bz2 project is not smart enough to remove anything under bzip2-1.0.2\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild bzip2.lib you need to clean up bzip2-1.0.2\ by hand. The build step shouldn't yield any warnings or errors, and should end by displaying 6 blocks each terminated with FC: no differences encountered If FC finds differences, see the warning abou WinZip above (when I first tried it, sample3.ref failed due to CRLF conversion). All of this managed to build bzip2-1.0.2\libbz2.lib, which the Python project links in. _bsddb Go to Sleepycat's download page: http://www.sleepycat.com/download/ and download version 4.2.52. With or without strong cryptography? You can choose either with or without strong cryptography, as per the instructions below. By default, Python is built and distributed WITHOUT strong crypto. Unpack into the dist\. directory, ensuring you expand with folder names. If you downloaded with strong crypto, this will create a dist\db-4.2.52 directory, and is ready to use. If you downloaded WITHOUT strong crypto, this will create a dist\db-4.2.52.NC directory - this directory should be renamed to dist\db-4.2.52 before use. As of 11-Apr-2004, you also need to download and manually apply two patches before proceeding (and the sleepycat download page tells you about this). Cygwin patch worked for me. cd to dist\db-4.2.52 and use "patch -p0 < patchfile" once for each downloaded patchfile. Open dist\db-4.2.52\docs\index.html and follow the "Windows->Building Berkeley DB with Visual C++ .NET" instructions for building the Sleepycat software. Note that Berkeley_DB.dsw is in the build_win32 subdirectory. Build the "Release Static" version. XXX We're linking against Release_static\libdb42s.lib. XXX This yields the following warnings: """ Compiling... _bsddb.c Linking... Creating library ./_bsddb.lib and object ./_bsddb.exp _bsddb.obj : warning LNK4217: locally defined symbol _malloc imported in function __db_associateCallback _bsddb.obj : warning LNK4217: locally defined symbol _free imported in function __DB_consume _bsddb.obj : warning LNK4217: locally defined symbol _fclose imported in function _DB_verify _bsddb.obj : warning LNK4217: locally defined symbol _fopen imported in function _DB_verify _bsddb.obj : warning LNK4217: locally defined symbol _strncpy imported in function _init_pybsddb __bsddb - 0 error(s), 5 warning(s) """ XXX This isn't encouraging, but I don't know what to do about it. To run extensive tests, pass "-u bsddb" to regrtest.py. test_bsddb3.py is then enabled. Running in verbose mode may be helpful. XXX The test_bsddb3 tests don't always pass, on Windows (according to XXX me) or on Linux (according to Barry). (I had much better luck XXX on Win2K than on Win98SE.) The common failure mode across platforms XXX is XXX DBAgainError: (11, 'Resource temporarily unavailable -- unable XXX to join the environment') XXX XXX and it appears timing-dependent. On Win2K I also saw this once: XXX XXX test02_SimpleLocks (bsddb.test.test_thread.HashSimpleThreaded) ... XXX Exception in thread reader 1: XXX Traceback (most recent call last): XXX File "C:\Code\python\lib\threading.py", line 411, in __bootstrap XXX self.run() XXX File "C:\Code\python\lib\threading.py", line 399, in run XXX apply(self.__target, self.__args, self.__kwargs) XXX File "C:\Code\python\lib\bsddb\test\test_thread.py", line 268, in XXX readerThread XXX rec = c.next() XXX DBLockDeadlockError: (-30996, 'DB_LOCK_DEADLOCK: Locker killed XXX to resolve a deadlock') XXX XXX I'm told that DBLockDeadlockError is expected at times. It XXX doesn't cause a test to fail when it happens (exceptions in XXX threads are invisible to unittest). XXX 11-Apr-2004 tim XXX On WinXP Pro, I got one failure from test_bsddb3: XXX XXX ERROR: test04_n_flag (bsddb.test.test_compat.CompatibilityTestCase) XXX Traceback (most recent call last): XXX File "C:\Code\python\lib\bsddb\test\test_compat.py", line 86, in test04_n_flag XXX f = hashopen(self.filename, 'n') XXX File "C:\Code\python\lib\bsddb\__init__.py", line 293, in hashopen XXX d.open(file, db.DB_HASH, flags, mode) XXX DBInvalidArgError: (22, 'Invalid argument -- DB_TRUNCATE illegal with locking specified') _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-0.9.7d.tar.gz not openssl-engine-0.9.7d.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-0.9.7d 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 PCBuild/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. Building for Itanium -------------------- The project files support a ReleaseItanium configuration which creates Win64/Itanium binaries. For this to work, you need to install the Platform SDK, in particular the 64-bit support. This includes an Itanium compiler (future releases of the SDK likely include an AMD64 compiler as well). In addition, you need the Visual Studio plugin for external C compilers, from http://sf.net/projects/vsextcomp. The plugin will wrap cl.exe, to locate the proper target compiler, and convert compiler options accordingly. The Itanium build has seen little testing. The SDK compiler reports a lot of warnings about conversion from size_t to int, which will be fixed in future Python releases. 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.