Building Python using VC++ 8.0
-------------------------------------
This directory is used to build Python for Win32 platforms, e.g. Windows
95, 98 and NT. It requires Microsoft Visual C++ 8.0
(a.k.a. Visual Studio 2005). There are two Platforms defined, Win32
and x64.
(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 solution.
A .bat file, build.bat, is provided to simplify command line builds.
Some of the subprojects rely on external libraries and won't build
unless you have them installed.
Binary files go into PCBuild8\$(PlatformName)($ConfigurationName),
which will be something like Win32Debug, Win32Release, x64Release, etc.
When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to
their name: python25_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on.
PROFILER GUIDED OPTIMIZATION
----------------------------
There are two special solution configurations for Profiler Guided
Optimization. Careful use of this has been shown to yield more than
10% extra speed.
1) Build the PGInstrument solution configuration. This will yield
binaries in the win32PGO or x64PGO folders. (You may want do start
by erasing any .pgc files there, present from earlier runs.)
2) Instrument the binaries. Do this by for example running the test
suite: win32PGO\python.exe ..\lib\test\regrtest.py. This will excercise
python thoroughly.
3) Build the PGUpdate solution configuration (You may need to ask it
to rebuild.) This will incorporate the information gathered in step 2
and produce new binaries in the same win32PGO or x64pPGO folders.
4) (optional) You can continue to build the PGUpdate configuration as
you work on python. It will continue to use the data from step 2, even
if you add or modify files as part of your work. Thus, it makes sense to
run steps 1 and 2 maybe once a week, and then use step 3) for all regular
work.
A .bat file, build_pgo.bat is included to automate this process
You can convince yourself of the benefits of the PGO by comparing the
results of the python testsuite with the regular Release build.
C RUNTIME
---------
Visual Studio 2005 uses version 8 of the C runtime. The executables are
linked to a CRT "side by side" assembly which must be present on the target
machine. This is avalible under the VC/Redist folder of your visual studio
distribution. Note that ServicePack1 of Visual Studio 2005 has a different
version than the original. On XP and later operating systems that support
side-by-side assemblies it is not enough to have the msvcrt80.dll present,
it has to be there as a whole assembly, that is, a folder with the .dll
and a .manifest. Also, a check is made for the correct version.
Therefore, one should distribute this assembly with the dlls, and keep
it in the same directory. For compatibility with older systems, one should
also set the PATH to this directory so that the dll can be found.
For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder.
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 8.4.12.
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 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\tcl8.4.12\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 10678 Passed 9969 Skipped 709 Failed 0
Sourced 129 Test Files.
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 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=..\..\tcl8.4.12 test
On WinXP Pro, wholly up to date as of 30-Aug-2004:
all.tcl: Total 8420 Passed 6826 Skipped 1581 Failed 13
Sourced 91 Test Files.
Files with failing tests: canvImg.test scrollbar.test textWind.test winWm.test
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
A custom pre-link step in the bz2 project settings should manage to
build bzip2-1.0.3\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
bzip2-1.0.3\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild bzip2.lib
you need to clean up bzip2-1.0.3\ 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
All of this managed to build bzip2-1.0.3\libbz2.lib, which the Python
project links in.
_bsddb
To use the version of bsddb that Python is built with by default, invoke
(in the dist directory)
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/db-4.4.20
Then open a VS.NET 2003 shell, and invoke:
devenv db-4.4.20\build_win32\Berkeley_DB.sln /build Release /project db_static
and do that a second time for a Debug build too:
devenv db-4.4.20\build_win32\Berkeley_DB.sln /build Debug /project db_static
Alternatively, if you want to start with the original sources,
go to Sleepycat's download page:
http://www.sleepycat.com/downloads/releasehistorybdb.html
and download version 4.4.20.
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 the sources; if you downloaded the non-crypto version, rename
the directory from db-4.4.20.NC to db-4.4.20.
Now apply any patches that apply to your version.
Open
dist\db-4.4.20\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 "db_static" project, for "Release" mode.
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).
Building for Win64:
- open a VS.NET 2003 command prompt
- run the SDK setenv.cmd script, passing /RETAIL and the target
architecture (/SRV64 for Itanium, /X64 for AMD64)
- build BerkeleyDB with the solution configuration matching the
target ("Release IA64" for Itanium, "Release AMD64" for AMD64), e.g.
devenv db-4.4.20\build_win32\Berkeley_DB.sln /build "Release AMD64" /project db_static /useenv
_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 PCbuild folder.
_ssl
Python wrapper for the secure sockets library.
Get the source code through
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-0.9.8a
Alternatively, get the latest version from http://www.openssl.org.
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 <wink>.
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 AMD64
------------------
Select x64 as the destination platform.
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.
Also, you can simply use Visual Studio to "Add new project to solution".
Elect to create a win32 project, .dll, empty project.
This will create a subdirectory with a .vcproj file in it. Now, You can
simply copy most of another .vcproj, like _test_capi/_test_capi.vcproj over
(you can't just copy and rename it, since the target will have a unique GUID.)
At some point we want to be able to provide a template for creating a
project.
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