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 _csv C support for the comma-separated values module _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 datetime datetimemodule.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 8.4.3: Get source ---------- Go to http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/ and download tcl843-src.zip tk843-src.zip Unzip into dist\tcl8.4.3\ dist\tk8.4.3\ respectively. Build Tcl first (done here w/ MSVC 6 on Win98SE) --------------- cd dist\tcl8.4.3\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 all.tcl: Total 10480 Passed 9743 Skipped 719 Failed 18 XXX XXX That was on Win98SE. On Win2K: XXX all.tcl Total 10480 Passed 9781 Skipped 698 Failed 1 Build Tk -------- cd dist\tk8.4.3\win nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.3 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.3 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcl84 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. 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? Make sure the installer matches ------------------------------- Ensure that the Wise compiler vrbl _TCLDIR_ is set to the name of the common Tcl/Tk installation directory (tcl84 for the instructions above). This is needed so the installer can copy various Tcl/Tk files into the Python distribution. 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 Go to Sleepycat's download page: http://www.sleepycat.com/download/ and download version 4.1.25. The file name is db-4.1.25.NC.zip. XXX with or without strong cryptography? I picked "without". Unpack into dist\db-4.1.25 [If using WinZip to unpack the db-4.1.25.NC distro, that requires renaming the directory (to remove ".NC") after unpacking. ] Open dist\db-4.1.25\docs\index.html and follow the Windows instructions for building the Sleepycat software. Note that Berkeley_DB.dsw is in the build_win32 subdirectory. Build the Release version ("build_all -- Win32 Release"). XXX We're actually linking against Release_static\libdb41s.lib. XXX This yields the following warnings: """ Compiling... _bsddb.c Linking... Creating library ./_bsddb.lib and object ./_bsddb.exp LINK : warning LNK4049: locally defined symbol "_malloc" imported LINK : warning LNK4049: locally defined symbol "_free" imported LINK : warning LNK4049: locally defined symbol "_fclose" imported LINK : warning LNK4049: locally defined symbol "_fopen" imported _bsddb.pyd - 0 error(s), 4 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). _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-0.9.7b.tar.gz not openssl-engine-0.9.7b.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-0.9.7b 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. Win9x users: see "Win9x note" below. 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. Win9x note: If, near the start of the build process, you see something like C:\Code\openssl-0.9.7b>set OPTS=no-asm Out of environment space then you're in trouble, and will probably also see these errors near the end of the process: NMAKE : fatal error U1073: don't know how to make 'crypto\md5\asm\m5_win32.asm' Stop. NMAKE : fatal error U1073: don't know how to make 'C:\Code\openssl-0.9.7b/out32/libeay32.lib' Stop. You need more environment space. Win9x only has room for 256 bytes by default, and especially after installing ActivePerl (which fiddles the PATH envar), you're likely to run out. KB Q230205 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q230205 explains how to edit CONFIG.SYS to cure this. 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. HTML Help --------- The compiled HTML help file is built from the HTML pages by the script Doc/tools/prechm.py. This creates project files which must be compiled with MS HTML Help Workshop.