1 Building Python using VC++ 9.0
2 ------------------------------
4 This directory is used to build Python for Win32 platforms, e.g. Windows
5 2000, XP and Vista. It requires Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0
6 (a.k.a. Visual Studio .NET 2008).
7 (For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../PC/readme.txt.)
9 All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.sln" in Visual Studio,
10 select the desired combination of configuration and platform and eventually
11 build the solution. Unless you are going to debug a problem in the core or
12 you are going to create an optimized build you want to select "Release" as
15 The PCbuild directory is compatible with all versions of Visual Studio from
16 VS C++ Express Edition over the standard edition up to the professional
17 edition. However the express edition does support features like solution
18 folders or profile guided optimization (PGO). The missing bits and pieces
19 won't stop you from building Python.
21 The solution is configured to build the projects in the correct order. "Build
22 Solution" or F6 takes care of dependencies except for x64 builds. To make
23 cross compiling x64 builds on a 32bit OS possible the x64 builds require a
24 32bit version of Python.
28 You probably don't want to build most of the other subprojects, unless
29 you're building an entire Python distribution from scratch, or
30 specifically making changes to the subsystems they implement, or are
31 running a Python core buildbot test slave; see SUBPROJECTS below)
33 When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to
34 their name: python30_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on.
36 The 32bit builds end up in the solution folder PCbuild while the x64 builds
37 land in the amd64 subfolder. The PGI and PGO builds for profile guided
38 optimization end up in their own folders, too.
43 You can find build directories for older versions of Visual Studio and
44 Visual C++ in the PC directory. The legacy build directories are no longer
45 actively maintained and may not work out of the box.
50 Visual Studio 2003 (7.1)
52 Visual Studio 2005 (8.0)
58 Visual Studio 2008 uses version 9 of the C runtime (MSVCRT9). The executables
59 are linked to a CRT "side by side" assembly which must be present on the target
60 machine. This is avalible under the VC/Redist folder of your visual studio
61 distribution. On XP and later operating systems that support
62 side-by-side assemblies it is not enough to have the msvcrt80.dll present,
63 it has to be there as a whole assembly, that is, a folder with the .dll
64 and a .manifest. Also, a check is made for the correct version.
65 Therefore, one should distribute this assembly with the dlls, and keep
66 it in the same directory. For compatibility with older systems, one should
67 also set the PATH to this directory so that the dll can be found.
68 For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder.
72 These subprojects should build out of the box. Subprojects other than the
73 main ones (pythoncore, python, pythonw) generally build a DLL (renamed to
74 .pyd) from a specific module so that users don't have to load the code
75 supporting that module unless they import the module.
82 pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't pop up a DOS box
86 tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and
87 implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c
89 Python wrapper for accelerated XML parsing, which incorporates stable
90 code from the Expat project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/
94 large tables of Unicode data
96 play sounds (typically .wav files) under Windows
98 The following subprojects will generally NOT build out of the box. They
99 wrap code Python doesn't control, and you'll need to download the base
100 packages first and unpack them into siblings of PCbuilds's parent
101 directory; for example, if your PCbuild is ..\dist\py3k\PCbuild\,
102 unpack into new subdirectories of ..\dist\.
105 Python wrapper for the Tk windowing system. Requires building
106 Tcl/Tk first. Following are instructions for Tcl/Tk 8.4.16.
108 NOTE: The 64 build builds must land in tcltk64 instead of tcltk.
112 In the dist directory, run
113 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tcl8.4.16
114 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tk8.4.16
115 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tix-8.4.0
117 Build with build_tkinter.py
118 ---------------------------
119 The PCbuild directory contains a Python script which automates all
120 steps. Run the script in a Visual Studio 2008 command prompt with
122 python build_tkinter.py Win32
124 Use x64 instead of Win32 for the x64 platform.
128 Use "Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
129 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt"
130 to get a shell window with the correct environment settings
131 cd dist\tcl8.4.16\win
133 nmake -f makefile.vc INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install
135 XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads?
137 Optional: run tests, via
138 nmake -f makefile.vc test
140 On WinXP Pro, wholly up to date as of 30-Aug-2004:
141 all.tcl: Total 10678 Passed 9969 Skipped 709 Failed 0
142 Sourced 129 Test Files.
147 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.16
148 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.16 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install
150 XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads?
152 XXX Our installer copies a lot of stuff out of the Tcl/Tk install
153 XXX directory. Is all of that really needed for Python use of Tcl/Tk?
155 Optional: run tests, via
156 nmake -f makefile.vc TCLDIR=..\..\tcl8.4.16 test
158 On WinXP Pro, wholly up to date as of 30-Aug-2004:
159 all.tcl: Total 8420 Passed 6826 Skipped 1581 Failed 13
160 Sourced 91 Test Files.
161 Files with failing tests: canvImg.test scrollbar.test textWind.test winWm.test
165 cd dist\tix-8.4.0\win
167 nmake -f python9.mak install
170 Python wrapper for the libbz2 compression library. Homepage
171 http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/
172 Download the source from the python.org copy into the dist
175 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.3
177 A custom pre-link step in the bz2 project settings should manage to
178 build bzip2-1.0.3\libbz2.lib by magic before bz2.pyd (or bz2_d.pyd) is
180 However, the bz2 project is not smart enough to remove anything under
181 bzip2-1.0.3\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild bzip2.lib
182 you need to clean up bzip2-1.0.3\ by hand.
184 All of this managed to build libbz2.lib in
185 bzip2-1.0.3\$platform-$configuration\, which the Python project links in.
189 To use the version of bsddb that Python is built with by default, invoke
190 (in the dist directory)
192 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/db-4.4.20
194 Next open the solution file db-4.4.20\build_win32\Berkeley_DB.sln with
195 Visual Studio and convert the projects to the new format. The standard
196 and professional version of VS 2008 builds the necessary libraries
197 in a pre-link step of _bsddb. However the express edition is missing
198 some pieces and you have to build the libs yourself.
200 The _bsddb subprojects depends only on the db_static project of
201 Berkeley DB. You have to choose either "Release", "Release AMD64", "Debug"
202 or "Debug AMD64" as configuration.
204 Alternatively, if you want to start with the original sources,
205 go to Sleepycat's download page:
206 http://www.sleepycat.com/downloads/releasehistorybdb.html
208 and download version 4.4.20.
210 With or without strong cryptography? You can choose either with or
211 without strong cryptography, as per the instructions below. By
212 default, Python is built and distributed WITHOUT strong crypto.
214 Unpack the sources; if you downloaded the non-crypto version, rename
215 the directory from db-4.4.20.NC to db-4.4.20.
217 Now apply any patches that apply to your version.
220 db-4.4.20\docs\ref\build_win\intro.html
222 and follow the "Windows->Building Berkeley DB with Visual C++ .NET"
223 instructions for building the Sleepycat
224 software. Note that Berkeley_DB.dsw is in the build_win32 subdirectory.
225 Build the "db_static" project, for "Release" mode.
227 To run extensive tests, pass "-u bsddb" to regrtest.py. test_bsddb3.py
228 is then enabled. Running in verbose mode may be helpful.
231 Python wrapper for SQLite library.
233 Get the source code through
235 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/sqlite-source-3.3.4
237 To use the extension module in a Python build tree, copy sqlite3.dll into
238 the PCbuild folder. The source directory in svn also contains a .def file
239 from the binary release of sqlite3.
242 Python wrapper for the secure sockets library.
244 Get the source code through
246 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-0.9.8g
248 Alternatively, get the latest version from http://www.openssl.org.
249 You can (theoretically) use any version of OpenSSL you like - the
250 build process will automatically select the latest version.
252 You must install the NASM assembler from
253 http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/devel/nasm/binaries/win32/
254 for x86 builds. Put nasmw.exe anywhere in your PATH.
256 You can also install ActivePerl from
257 http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/
258 if you like to use the official sources instead of the files from
259 python's subversion repository. The svn version contains pre-build
260 makefiles and assembly files.
262 The build process makes sure that no patented algorithms are included.
263 For now RC5, MDC2 and IDEA are excluded from the build. You may have
264 to manually remove $(OBJ_D)\i_*.obj from ms\nt.mak if the build process
265 complains about missing files or forbidden IDEA. Again the files provided
266 in the subversion repository are already fixed.
268 The MSVC project simply invokes PCBuild/build_ssl.py to perform
269 the build. This Python script locates and builds your OpenSSL
270 installation, then invokes a simple makefile to build the final .pyd.
272 build_ssl.py attempts to catch the most common errors (such as not
273 being able to find OpenSSL sources, or not being able to find a Perl
274 that works with OpenSSL) and give a reasonable error message.
275 If you have a problem that doesn't seem to be handled correctly
276 (eg, you know you have ActivePerl but we can't find it), please take
277 a peek at build_ssl.py and suggest patches. Note that build_ssl.py
278 should be able to be run directly from the command-line.
280 build_ssl.py/MSVC isn't clever enough to clean OpenSSL - you must do
287 Official support for Itanium builds have been dropped from the build. Please
288 contact as and provide patches if you are interested in Itanium builds.
290 The project files support a ReleaseItanium configuration which creates
291 Win64/Itanium binaries. For this to work, you need to install the Platform
292 SDK, in particular the 64-bit support. This includes an Itanium compiler
293 (future releases of the SDK likely include an AMD64 compiler as well).
294 In addition, you need the Visual Studio plugin for external C compilers,
295 from http://sf.net/projects/vsextcomp. The plugin will wrap cl.exe, to
296 locate the proper target compiler, and convert compiler options
297 accordingly. The project files require atleast version 0.9.
302 The build process for AMD64 / x64 is very similar to standard builds. You just
303 have to set x64 as platform.
305 Building Python Using the free MS Toolkit Compiler
306 --------------------------------------------------
308 Microsoft has withdrawn the free MS Toolkit Compiler, so this can no longer
309 be considered a supported option. Instead you can use the free VS C++ Express
312 Profile Guided Optimization
313 ---------------------------
315 The solution has two configurations for PGO. The PGInstrument
316 configuration must be build first. The PGInstrument binaries are
317 lniked against a profiling library and contain extra debug
318 information. The PGUpdate configuration takes the profiling data and
319 generates optimized binaries.
321 The build_pgo.bat script automates the creation of optimized binaries. It
322 creates the PGI files, runs the unit test suite or PyBench with the PGI
323 python and finally creates the optimized files.
325 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7k32f4k(VS.90).aspx
330 The solution has no configuration for static libraries. However it is easy
331 it build a static library instead of a DLL. You simply have to set the
332 "Configuration Type" to "Static Library (.lib)" and alter the preprocessor
333 macro "Py_ENABLE_SHARED" to "Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED". You may also have to
334 change the "Runtime Library" from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to
335 "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
337 Visual Studio properties
338 ------------------------
340 The PCbuild solution makes heavy use of Visual Studio property files
341 (*.vsprops). The properties can be viewed and altered in the Property
342 Manager (View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager).
344 * debug (debug macro: _DEBUG)
348 * pyd (python extension, release build)
351 * pyd_d (python extension, debug build)
354 * pyproject (base settings for all projects, user macros like PyDllName)
355 * release (release macro: NDEBUG)
356 * x64 (AMD64 / x64 platform specific settings)
358 The pyproject propertyfile defines _WIN32 and x64 defines _WIN64 and _M_X64
359 although the macros are set by the compiler, too. The GUI doesn't always know
360 about the macros and confuse the user with false information.
362 YOUR OWN EXTENSION DLLs
363 -----------------------
365 If you want to create your own extension module DLL, there's an example
366 with easy-to-follow instructions in ../PC/example/; read the file
367 readme.txt there first.