1 This is Python version 2.5
2 ==========================
4 Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Python Software Foundation.
7 Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com.
10 Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
13 Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum.
20 See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this
21 software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL
24 This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public Licensed
25 (GPLed) code so it may be used in proprietary projects just like prior
26 Python distributions. There are interfaces to some GNU code but these
27 are entirely optional.
29 All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective
33 What's new in this release?
34 ---------------------------
36 See the file "Misc/NEWS".
39 If you don't read instructions
40 ------------------------------
42 Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
44 To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
45 current directory and when it finishes, type "make". This creates an
46 executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
47 and then "make install".
49 The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
52 What is Python anyway?
53 ----------------------
55 Python is an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming
56 language suitable (amongst other uses) for distributed application
57 development, scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python
58 is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or
59 Scheme. To find out more about what Python can do for you, point your
60 browser to http://www.python.org/.
63 How do I learn Python?
64 ----------------------
66 The official tutorial is still a good place to start; see
67 http://docs.python.org/ for online and downloadable versions, as well
68 as a list of other introductions, and reference documentation.
70 There's a quickly growing set of books on Python. See
71 http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
77 All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats. In
78 order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
79 Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API. The
80 Library Reference is especially of immense value since much of
81 Python's power is described there, including the built-in data types
84 All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
85 (http://docs.python.org/, see below). It is available online for
86 occasional reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for faster
87 access. The documentation is available in HTML, PostScript, PDF, and
88 LaTeX formats; the LaTeX version is primarily for documentation
89 authors, translators, and people with special formatting requirements.
91 Unfortunately, new-style classes (new in Python 2.2) have not yet been
92 integrated into Python's standard documentation. A collection of
93 pointers to what has been written is at:
95 http://www.python.org/doc/newstyle.html
101 New Python releases and related technologies are published at
102 http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
104 There's also a Python community web site at
105 http://starship.python.net/.
108 Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
109 ----------------------------
111 Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
112 Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
113 for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
114 mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for an
115 overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
117 Archives are accessible via the Google Groups Usenet archive; see
118 http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
119 http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for details.
125 To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
126 Tracker at http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470.
129 Patches and contributions
130 -------------------------
132 To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
133 Manager at http://sourceforge.net/patch/?group_id=5470. Guidelines
134 for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/patches/.
136 If you have a proposal to change Python, it's best to submit a Python
137 Enhancement Proposal (PEP) first. All current PEPs, as well as
138 guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
139 http://www.python.org/peps/.
145 For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
146 best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
147 above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
148 mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
149 who answer questions as they can). The newsgroup is the most
150 efficient way to ask public questions.
156 Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
157 Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
158 for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
159 type a few commands and sit back. There are some platforms where
160 things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
161 If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
162 tree, see the section on VPATH below.
164 Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
165 system configuration and creates the Makefile. (It takes a minute or
166 two -- please be patient!) You may want to pass options to the
167 configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
168 variables. When it's done, you are ready to run make.
170 To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
171 If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
172 rebuilt. In this case you may have to run make again to correctly
173 build your desired target. The interpreter executable is built in the
176 Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
177 testing and installation. If you run into trouble, see the next
180 Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
181 involved editing the file Modules/Setup. While this file still exists
182 and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
183 more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
184 guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
185 interpreter has been built.
191 See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
193 If you run into other trouble, see the FAQ
194 (http://www.python.org/doc/faq) for hints on what can go wrong, and
197 If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
198 object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
199 not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
200 problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
202 If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
203 should be there, inspect the config.log file.
205 If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
206 longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
207 whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
208 accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
209 is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
210 which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
211 warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
214 If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
215 are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
216 optimization. This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
217 some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
218 by turning off optimization. Consider switching to stable versions
219 (gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
221 From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C. Compiling using
222 old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible. ANSI C compilers are
223 available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
224 compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
229 A number of features are not supported in Python 2.5 anymore. Some
230 support code is still present, but will be removed in Python 2.6.
231 If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
232 please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
233 volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion
234 regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
235 as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
237 More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
244 - Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
246 - Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.in)
247 - Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
248 or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
249 - Systems using --with-dl-dld
250 - Systems using --without-universal-newlines
253 The following systems are still supported in Python 2.5, but
254 support will be dropped in 2.6:
255 - Systems using --with-wctype-functions
258 Warning on install in Windows 98 and Windows Me
259 -----------------------------------------------
261 Following Microsoft's closing of Extended Support for
262 Windows 98/ME (July 11, 2006), Python 2.6 will stop
263 supporting these platforms. Python development and
264 maintainability becomes easier (and more reliable) when
265 platform specific code targeting OSes with few users
266 and no dedicated expert developers is taken out. The
267 vendor also warns that the OS versions listed above
268 "can expose customers to security risks" and recommends
271 Platform specific notes
272 -----------------------
274 (Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
275 on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
276 submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
277 above) so we can remove them!)
280 GCC 4.2: There is a known incompatibility between Python and GCC,
281 where GCC 4.1 and later uses an interpretation of C
282 different to earlier GCC releases in an area where the C
283 specification has undefined behaviour (namely, integer arithmetic
284 involving -sys.maxint-1).
286 As a consequence, compiling Python with GCC 4.1/4.2 is not
287 recommended. It is likely that this problem will be resolved
288 in future Python releases. As a work-around, it seems that
289 adding -fwrapv to the compiler options restores the earlier
292 Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
293 1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
294 module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
295 default. In Modules/Setup a line like
297 bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
299 should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
300 compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
302 XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
304 64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, imageop and rgbimg don't work.
305 The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
306 Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
307 contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
310 Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
311 2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
312 way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
313 the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
316 When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
317 versions built using it. This mistakenly enables the
318 -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
319 Solaris. binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
320 are aware of the problem. Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
321 fixed things. It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
322 completely. This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
323 and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
326 When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
329 ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
330 No such file or directory
332 you need to first make sure that the library is available on
333 your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
334 to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
336 1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
337 containing missing libraries.
338 2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
339 3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
340 4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
343 The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
344 least up to 3.4.3). To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
347 make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
348 ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
350 Linux: A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
351 the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
352 solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
353 problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
355 Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
356 Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
357 need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
359 There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
360 1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
361 require this version. Python 2.1.x may be installed as
362 /usr/bin/python2. The Makefile installs Python as
363 /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
364 over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
366 FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
367 similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
368 the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
369 the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
370 cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
371 called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
372 required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
373 automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
375 BSDI: BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
376 which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
377 instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
378 Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
379 BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
381 DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
382 --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
383 default). When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
384 compiler error if optimization is used. This was reported for
385 GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile the affected
386 file without optimization to solve the problem.
388 DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
389 and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
391 AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
392 place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
393 (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
394 has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
395 errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
396 testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
397 like "cc_r". For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
398 CC="xlC" without thread support).
400 AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
403 export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
404 ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
405 --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
408 HP-UX: When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
409 OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight,
410 this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
411 even though pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
412 using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
415 HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
416 compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
417 optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
418 (see http://www.python.org/sf/814976). To work around this,
419 edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
421 To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
422 compiler, use these environment variables:
427 LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
429 and call configure as:
431 ./configure --without-gcc
433 then *unset* the environment variables again before running
434 make. (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
435 if it remains set.) You still have to edit the Makefile and
436 remove -O from the OPT line.
438 HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://www.python.org/sf/546117)
439 suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
440 in the optimizer that break Python. Compiling without
441 optimization solves the problems.
443 SCO: The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
444 on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
446 1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
447 defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
448 Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
449 conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
451 2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
452 stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
455 LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
457 UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
458 problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
459 thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
460 tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
462 QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
463 configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
464 ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
465 test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
467 1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
468 ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
470 2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
471 your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
473 array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
474 crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
475 _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
476 posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop, rgbimg, rotor,
477 select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
478 syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop, rgbimg
480 3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
482 or, if you feel the need for speed:
484 make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
486 4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
488 Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
489 think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
491 5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
493 If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
494 I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
495 probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
496 little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
497 to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
499 BeOS: See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
500 Python on BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC
501 platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
504 Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
505 Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
506 my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
507 there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
508 thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
511 1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
512 work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
514 2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
515 following environment variable to the configure script:
519 2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
521 3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
522 modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
523 in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
525 posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
527 On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
528 included successfully:
530 _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
531 array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
532 errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
533 regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
534 time, timing, xreadlines
536 4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
537 will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
538 extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
539 will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
542 5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
543 problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
544 singly or in small groups.
546 SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
547 does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
548 is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
549 it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
550 smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
551 you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
552 smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
554 WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
555 SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
556 behavior, especially on numerical operations. To avoid this,
557 try building with "make OPT=".
559 OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
560 compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
561 and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
562 in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
564 Monterey (64-bit AIX): The current Monterey C compiler (Visual Age)
565 uses the OBJECT_MODE={32|64} environment variable to set the
566 compilation mode to either 32-bit or 64-bit (32-bit mode is
567 the default). Presumably you want 64-bit compilation mode for
568 this 64-bit OS. As a result you must first set OBJECT_MODE=64
569 in your environment before configuring (./configure) or
570 building (make) Python on Monterey.
572 Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
573 there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
574 platform as well. This should be resolved in time for a
577 MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
578 test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size. If
579 you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
580 failure can be avoided. If you're using the tcsh (the default
581 on OSX), or csh shells use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the
582 bash shell, use "ulimit -s 2048".
584 On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
585 "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
586 interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
587 if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
589 On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
590 "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
591 before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
592 do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
593 as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
596 Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
597 to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all
598 references to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
600 You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
601 which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
602 as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
603 /Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
604 want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
605 Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
607 You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
608 which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the
609 i386 and PPC architectures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
611 See Mac/OSX/README for more information on framework and
614 Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
615 Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
616 of dynamic linking and fork(). This manifests itself in build
617 failures during the execution of setup.py.
619 There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
620 without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
621 NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
622 on XP would be appreciated).
626 (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
627 rather than dynamically (which is the default).
629 To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
630 other options you need (--prefix, etc.). Then in Modules/Setup
634 #_socket socketmodule.c \
635 # -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
636 # -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
638 and remove "local/" from the SSL variable. Finally, just run
641 (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
642 base address conflicts. Details on how to do this can be
643 found in the following mail:
645 http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
647 It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
648 incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
650 Two additional problems:
652 (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
653 bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
656 (2) The _curses module does not build. This is a known
657 Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
658 that this package is released.
660 On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
663 The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
664 Some time ago, there were reports that the following
665 regression tests failed:
671 Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
672 regression test using the following:
674 make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
676 News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
677 versions would be appreciated!
679 AtheOS: From Octavian Cerna <tavy at ylabs.com>:
683 Make sure you have shared versions of the libraries you
684 want to use with Python. You will have to compile them
685 yourself, or download precompiled packages.
687 Recommended libraries:
695 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/python
698 Python is always built as a shared library, otherwise
699 dynamic loading would not work.
708 # pkgmanager -a /usr/python
713 - large file support: due to a stdio bug in glibc/libio,
714 access to large files may not work correctly. fseeko()
715 tries to seek to a negative offset. ftello() returns a
716 negative offset, it looks like a 32->64bit
717 sign-extension issue. The lowlevel functions (open,
719 - sockets: AF_UNIX is defined in the C library and in
720 Python, but not implemented in the system.
721 - select: poll is available in the C library, but does not
722 work (It does not return POLLNVAL for bad fds and
724 - posix: statvfs and fstatvfs always return ENOSYS.
726 - mmap: not yet implemented in AtheOS
727 - nis: broken (on an unconfigured system
728 yp_get_default_domain() returns junk instead of
730 - dl: dynamic loading doesn't work via dlopen()
731 - resource: getrimit and setrlimit are not yet
734 - if you are getting segmentation faults, you probably are
735 low on memory. AtheOS doesn't handle very well an
736 out-of-memory condition and simply SEGVs the process.
746 Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
747 -------------------------------------
749 Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
750 <http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
751 exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
752 backwards-compatible behavior. Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
753 Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
754 aren't supported through this interface. The old bsddb module has
755 been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default. Users
756 wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it. The
757 dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
758 other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
760 Building the sqlite3 module
761 ---------------------------
763 To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
764 packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
765 systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
766 often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
769 The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
770 or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
775 As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default. If you wish to
776 compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
777 --with-threads=no switch to configure. Unfortunately, on some
778 platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
779 threads to work properly. Below is a table of those options,
780 collected by Bill Janssen. We would love to automate this process
781 more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
782 configure.in file, so manual intervention is required. If you patch
783 the configure.in file and are confident that the patch works, please
784 send in the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
785 -- it is regenerated each time the configure.in file changes.)
787 Compiler switches for threads
788 .............................
790 The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
791 that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
792 incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
794 OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
795 (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) compile & link
797 SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris -mt
798 SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (nothing)
799 DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE -threads
800 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
801 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE -threads
802 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
803 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX -pthread
804 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
805 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
807 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
809 IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
813 Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
814 ...........................................
816 OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
818 SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
819 SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
820 DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
821 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
822 Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
823 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
824 Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
825 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
826 AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
828 IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
829 (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
832 Building a shared libpython
833 ---------------------------
835 Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
836 into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
837 executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
838 configure with --enable-shared.
840 If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
841 a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
842 files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
843 are needed for the shared library.
846 Configuring additional built-in modules
847 ---------------------------------------
849 Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
850 distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
851 automatically compiles them. Autodetection doesn't always work, so
852 you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
853 file; but this should be considered a last resort. The rest of this
854 section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
855 You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
856 is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
858 This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
859 if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
860 yourself (configure will never overwrite it). Never edit Setup.dist
861 -- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below). Read the comments in
862 the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed. When you
863 have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
864 automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
867 Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
868 modules can't be reliably autodetected. Often the quickest way to
869 determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
870 will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
871 errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
872 the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
874 On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
875 system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware. These
876 modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
878 In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
879 (the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
880 convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
881 installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
885 Setting the optimization/debugging options
886 ------------------------------------------
888 If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
889 the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
890 command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
891 on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
892 environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
893 (likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
894 set of libraries to link with).
896 When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
897 the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
899 Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
900 be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
902 For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
909 If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
910 with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
911 invocation. For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
914 CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
916 Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
917 libraries. The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
918 link most extension modules statically.
924 To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
925 This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
926 the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
927 produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
928 skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
929 If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
930 dump is produced, something is wrong. On some Linux systems (those
931 that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
932 non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
933 ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
935 IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
936 *don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
937 failing test manually, as follows:
939 ./python ./Lib/test/test_whatever.py
941 (substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
942 different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
948 To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
949 (see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
954 This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
955 the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
956 `prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local). All binary and other
957 platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
958 directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
959 (defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
961 If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
962 installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
963 $(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
965 All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
966 name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
967 "/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
968 <major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1"). The Python binary is
969 installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
970 created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
971 name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
974 If you have a previous installation of Python that you don't
975 want to replace yet, use
979 This installs the same set of files as "make install" except it
980 doesn't create the hard link to "python<version>" named "python" and
981 it doesn't install the manual page at all.
983 The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
984 Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
985 versions of Emacs may already have it.) Follow the instructions that
986 came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
988 On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
989 should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
990 installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
991 PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
994 Configuration options and variables
995 -----------------------------------
997 Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
1000 WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
1001 must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
1002 after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
1005 --with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
1006 it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
1007 installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
1008 --without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
1009 name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
1010 advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
1011 remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
1014 --prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
1015 Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
1016 you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
1017 binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
1018 library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
1019 --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
1020 installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
1021 interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
1022 affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
1023 Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
1024 prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
1025 prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
1026 than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
1027 about the install prefix.
1029 --with-readline: This option is no longer supported. GNU
1030 readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
1032 --with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
1033 threads, and support for this is enabled by default. To
1034 disable this, pass --with-threads=no. If the library required
1035 for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
1036 --with-thread=DIRECTORY. IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
1037 changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
1038 will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
1039 --with-dec-threads instead.
1041 --with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
1042 supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
1043 ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
1044 This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
1045 library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
1046 is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
1047 IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
1048 shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1050 --with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
1051 on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
1052 Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
1053 combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
1054 (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
1055 emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
1057 ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
1058 enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
1059 configure, passing it the option
1060 --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
1061 the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
1062 DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
1063 (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
1064 linking using shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1066 --with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
1067 versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
1068 (default the empty string) using the options
1069 --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. For
1070 example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
1071 compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
1072 --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
1073 libraries, the C library last.
1075 --with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
1078 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
1079 then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
1080 function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
1081 <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
1082 It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
1083 runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
1085 There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
1086 with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
1087 E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
1088 a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
1089 --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
1090 between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
1091 build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
1094 The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
1095 determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
1096 to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
1097 line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
1098 change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
1099 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
1100 In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
1101 some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
1102 CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
1103 C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
1105 Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
1106 python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
1109 --with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
1110 memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
1111 live objects when the interpreter terminates.
1113 --with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
1114 foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
1115 any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
1116 If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
1117 in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
1118 read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1120 --with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
1122 --with-system-ffi: Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
1123 library installed on the system.
1126 Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
1127 -------------------------------------------------------------
1129 If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
1130 usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
1131 architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
1132 VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
1133 architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
1134 appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
1135 necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
1136 contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
1137 actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
1138 you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
1140 For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
1141 in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
1142 directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
1144 $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
1145 $ cd /usr/tmp/python
1146 $ ~guido/src/python/configure
1152 Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
1153 directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
1154 edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
1155 reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
1156 automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
1157 of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
1158 makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
1159 fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
1160 doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
1161 however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
1164 Building on non-UNIX systems
1165 ----------------------------
1167 For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
1168 project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. See
1169 PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
1171 For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
1172 for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
1174 For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
1175 for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
1176 development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
1177 (http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
1178 pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
1180 Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
1181 platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
1183 To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
1184 effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
1185 has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
1186 pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
1187 configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
1188 1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
1189 otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
1190 variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
1192 For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
1193 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
1194 build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
1195 release-build performance). The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
1199 Miscellaneous issues
1200 ====================
1205 There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
1206 Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it
1207 is now maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw (it's no
1208 coincidence that they now both work on the same team). The latest
1209 version, along with various other contributed Python-related Emacs
1210 goodies, is online at http://www.python.org/emacs/python-mode. And
1211 if you are planning to edit the Python C code, please pick up the
1212 latest version of CC Mode http://www.python.org/emacs/cc-mode; it
1213 contains a "python" style used throughout most of the Python C source
1214 files. (Newer versions of Emacs or XEmacs may already come with the
1215 latest version of python-mode.)
1221 The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
1222 usable Tcl/Tk installation. This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
1225 For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
1226 http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
1228 There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
1230 Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
1231 lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
1232 (lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
1233 Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
1234 Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
1235 module. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
1236 and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
1237 this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
1238 set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
1241 Distribution structure
1242 ----------------------
1244 Most subdirectories have their own README files. Most files have
1247 BeOS/ Files specific to the BeOS port
1248 Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
1249 Doc/ Documentation sources (LaTeX)
1250 Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
1251 Include/ Public header files
1252 LICENSE Licensing information
1253 Lib/ Python library modules
1254 Mac/ Macintosh specific resources
1255 Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
1256 Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
1257 Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
1258 Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
1259 PC/ Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
1260 PCbuild/ Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
1261 Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
1262 Python/ The byte-compiler and interpreter
1263 README The file you're reading now
1264 Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
1265 pyconfig.h.in Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
1266 configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
1267 configure.in Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
1268 install-sh Shell script used to install files
1269 setup.py Python script used to build extension modules
1271 The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
1272 the configuration and build processes:
1274 Makefile Build rules
1275 Makefile.pre Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
1276 buildno Keeps track of the build number
1277 config.cache Cache of configuration variables
1278 pyconfig.h Configuration header
1279 config.log Log from last configure run
1280 config.status Status from last run of the configure script
1281 getbuildinfo.o Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
1282 libpython<version>.a The library archive
1283 python The executable interpreter
1284 tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
1291 --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)