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 building Tcl/Tk first. Following are instructions for Tcl/Tk 8.4.1: Get source ---------- Go to http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/ and download tcl841-src.zip tk841-src.zip Unzip into dist\tcl8.4.1\ dist\tk8.4.1\ respectively. Build Tcl first (done here w/ MSVC 6 on Win2K; also Win98SE) --------------- cd dist\tcl8.4.1\win run vcvars32.bat [necessary even on Win2K] nmake -f makefile.vc nmake -f makefile.vc INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcl84 install XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads? XXX Some tests failed in "nmake -f makefile.vc test". XXX Should rename destination directory to something more generic XXX then tcl84. But unless I can backport 8.4.1 to the 2.2 line XXX too, I've got to be able to build using more than one Tcl/Tk XXX release, and that effectively reserves the "tcl" directory name XXX for the duration. Nothing that requires thought is going to XXX work when it comes to release crunch times. Build Tk -------- cd dist\tk8.4.1\win nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.1 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.1 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcl84 install XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads? XXX Some tests failed in "nmake -f makefile.vc test". 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? 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. 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. Don't bother trying to use libbz2.dsp with MSVC. After 10 minutes of fiddling, I couldn't get it to work. Perhaps it works with MSVC 5 (I used MSVC 6). It's better to run the by-hand makefile anyway, because it runs a helpful test step at the end. cd into dist\bzip2-1.0.2, and run nmake -f makefile.msc [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). ] The make 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 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.