/PCbuild/readme.txt

  1Building Python using VC++ 9.0
  2------------------------------
  3
  4This directory is used to build Python for Win32 and x64 platforms, e.g. 
  5Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows Server 2008.  In order to build 32-bit
  6debug and release executables, Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition is
  7required at the very least.  In order to build 64-bit debug and release
  8executables, Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition is required at the very
  9least.  In order to build all of the above, as well as generate release builds
 10that make use of Profile Guided Optimisation (PG0), Visual Studio 2008
 11Professional Edition is required at the very least.  The official Python
 12releases are built with this version of Visual Studio.
 13
 14For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../PC/readme.txt.
 15
 16All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.sln" in Visual Studio,
 17select the desired combination of configuration and platform and eventually
 18build the solution. Unless you are going to debug a problem in the core or
 19you are going to create an optimized build you want to select "Release" as
 20configuration.
 21
 22The PCbuild directory is compatible with all versions of Visual Studio from
 23VS C++ Express Edition over the standard edition up to the professional
 24edition. However the express edition does not support features like solution
 25folders or profile guided optimization (PGO). The missing bits and pieces
 26won't stop you from building Python.
 27
 28The solution is configured to build the projects in the correct order. "Build
 29Solution" or F7 takes care of dependencies except for x64 builds. To make
 30cross compiling x64 builds on a 32bit OS possible the x64 builds require a 
 3132bit version of Python.
 32
 33NOTE:
 34   You probably don't want to build most of the other subprojects, unless
 35   you're building an entire Python distribution from scratch, or
 36   specifically making changes to the subsystems they implement, or are
 37   running a Python core buildbot test slave; see SUBPROJECTS below)
 38
 39When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to
 40their name:  python30_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on. Both
 41the build and rt batch files accept a -d option for debug builds.
 42
 43The 32bit builds end up in the solution folder PCbuild while the x64 builds
 44land in the amd64 subfolder. The PGI and PGO builds for profile guided
 45optimization end up in their own folders, too.
 46
 47Legacy support
 48--------------
 49
 50You can find build directories for older versions of Visual Studio and 
 51Visual C++ in the PC directory. The legacy build directories are no longer
 52actively maintained and may not work out of the box.
 53
 54PC/VC6/
 55    Visual C++ 6.0
 56PC/VS7.1/
 57    Visual Studio 2003 (7.1)
 58PCbuild8/
 59    Visual Studio 2005 (8.0)
 60
 61
 62C RUNTIME
 63---------
 64
 65Visual Studio 2008 uses version 9 of the C runtime (MSVCRT9).  The executables
 66are linked to a CRT "side by side" assembly which must be present on the target
 67machine.  This is avalible under the VC/Redist folder of your visual studio
 68distribution. On XP and later operating systems that support
 69side-by-side assemblies it is not enough to have the msvcrt90.dll present,
 70it has to be there as a whole assembly, that is, a folder with the .dll
 71and a .manifest.  Also, a check is made for the correct version.
 72Therefore, one should distribute this assembly with the dlls, and keep
 73it in the same directory.  For compatibility with older systems, one should
 74also set the PATH to this directory so that the dll can be found.
 75For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder.
 76
 77SUBPROJECTS
 78-----------
 79These subprojects should build out of the box.  Subprojects other than the
 80main ones (pythoncore, python, pythonw) generally build a DLL (renamed to
 81.pyd) from a specific module so that users don't have to load the code
 82supporting that module unless they import the module.
 83
 84pythoncore
 85    .dll and .lib
 86python
 87    .exe
 88pythonw
 89    pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't pop up a DOS box
 90_socket
 91    socketmodule.c
 92_testcapi
 93    tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and
 94    implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c
 95pyexpat
 96    Python wrapper for accelerated XML parsing, which incorporates stable
 97    code from the Expat project:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/
 98select
 99    selectmodule.c
100unicodedata
101    large tables of Unicode data
102winsound
103    play sounds (typically .wav files) under Windows
104
105Python-controlled subprojects that wrap external projects:
106_bsddb
107    Wraps Berkeley DB 4.7.25, which is currently built by _bsddb.vcproj.
108    project (see below).
109_sqlite3
110    Wraps SQLite 3.5.9, which is currently built by sqlite3.vcproj (see below).
111_tkinter
112    Wraps the Tk windowing system.  Unlike _bsddb and _sqlite3, there's no
113    corresponding tcltk.vcproj-type project that builds Tcl/Tk from vcproj's
114    within our pcbuild.sln, which means this module expects to find a
115    pre-built Tcl/Tk in either ..\..\tcltk for 32-bit or ..\..\tcltk64 for
116    64-bit (relative to this directory).  See below for instructions to build
117    Tcl/Tk. 
118bz2
119    Python wrapper for the libbz2 compression library.  Homepage
120        http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/
121    Download the source from the python.org copy into the dist
122    directory:
123
124    svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.5
125
126    ** NOTE: if you use the Tools\buildbot\external(-amd64).bat approach for
127    obtaining external sources then you don't need to manually get the source
128    above via subversion. **
129
130    A custom pre-link step in the bz2 project settings should manage to
131    build bzip2-1.0.5\libbz2.lib by magic before bz2.pyd (or bz2_d.pyd) is
132    linked in PCbuild\.
133    However, the bz2 project is not smart enough to remove anything under
134    bzip2-1.0.5\ when you do a clean, so if you want to rebuild bzip2.lib
135    you need to clean up bzip2-1.0.5\ by hand.
136
137    All of this managed to build libbz2.lib in 
138    bzip2-1.0.5\$platform-$configuration\, which the Python project links in.
139
140_ssl
141    Python wrapper for the secure sockets library.
142
143    Get the source code through
144
145    svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-0.9.8g
146
147    ** NOTE: if you use the Tools\buildbot\external(-amd64).bat approach for
148    obtaining external sources then you don't need to manually get the source
149    above via subversion. **
150
151    Alternatively, get the latest version from http://www.openssl.org.
152    You can (theoretically) use any version of OpenSSL you like - the
153    build process will automatically select the latest version.
154
155    You must install the NASM assembler from
156        http://nasm.sf.net
157    for x86 builds.  Put nasmw.exe anywhere in your PATH.
158
159    You can also install ActivePerl from
160        http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/
161    if you like to use the official sources instead of the files from 
162    python's subversion repository. The svn version contains pre-build
163    makefiles and assembly files.
164
165    The build process makes sure that no patented algorithms are included.
166    For now RC5, MDC2 and IDEA are excluded from the build. You may have 
167    to manually remove $(OBJ_D)\i_*.obj from ms\nt.mak if the build process
168    complains about missing files or forbidden IDEA. Again the files provided
169    in the subversion repository are already fixed.
170
171    The MSVC project simply invokes PCBuild/build_ssl.py to perform
172    the build.  This Python script locates and builds your OpenSSL
173    installation, then invokes a simple makefile to build the final .pyd.
174
175    build_ssl.py attempts to catch the most common errors (such as not
176    being able to find OpenSSL sources, or not being able to find a Perl
177    that works with OpenSSL) and give a reasonable error message.
178    If you have a problem that doesn't seem to be handled correctly
179    (eg, you know you have ActivePerl but we can't find it), please take
180    a peek at build_ssl.py and suggest patches.  Note that build_ssl.py
181    should be able to be run directly from the command-line.
182
183    build_ssl.py/MSVC isn't clever enough to clean OpenSSL - you must do
184    this by hand.
185
186The subprojects above wrap external projects Python doesn't control, and as
187such, a little more work is required in order to download the relevant source 
188files for each project before they can be built.  The buildbots do this each
189time they're built, so the easiest approach is to run either external.bat or 
190external-amd64.bat in the ..\Tools\buildbot directory from ..\, i.e.:
191
192    C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk\PCbuild>cd ..
193    C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk>Tools\buildbot\external.bat
194
195This extracts all the external subprojects from http://svn.python.org/external
196via Subversion (so you'll need an svn.exe on your PATH) and places them in 
197..\.. (relative to this directory).  The external(-amd64).bat scripts will
198also build a debug build of Tcl/Tk; there aren't any equivalent batch files
199for building release versions of Tcl/Tk lying around in the Tools\buildbot
200directory.  If you need to build a release version of Tcl/Tk it isn't hard
201though, take a look at the relevant external(-amd64).bat file and find the
202two nmake lines, then call each one without the 'DEBUG=1' parameter, i.e.:
203
204The external-amd64.bat file contains this for tcl:
205    nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 DEBUG=1 MACHINE=AMD64 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk64 clean all install
206
207So for a release build, you'd call it as:
208    nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 MACHINE=AMD64 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk64 clean all install
209
210    XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads?
211    XXX Our installer copies a lot of stuff out of the Tcl/Tk install
212    XXX directory.  Is all of that really needed for Python use of Tcl/Tk?
213
214This will be cleaned up in the future; ideally Tcl/Tk will be brought into our
215pcbuild.sln as custom .vcproj files, just as we've recently done with the
216_bsddb.vcproj and sqlite3.vcproj files, which will remove the need for
217Tcl/Tk to be built separately via a batch file.
218
219XXX trent.nelson 02-Apr-08:
220    Having the external subprojects in ..\.. relative to this directory is a
221    bit of a nuisance when you're working on py3k and trunk in parallel and
222    your directory layout mimics that of Python's subversion layout, e.g.:
223
224        C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk
225        C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\branches\py3k
226        C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\branches\release25-maint
227
228    I'd like to change things so that external subprojects are fetched from
229    ..\external instead of ..\.., then provide some helper scripts or batch
230    files that would set up a new ..\external directory with svn checkouts of
231    the relevant branches in http://svn.python.org/projects/external/, or
232    alternatively, use junctions to link ..\external with a pre-existing
233    externals directory being used by another branch.  i.e. if I'm usually
234    working on trunk (and have previously created trunk\external via the
235    provided batch file), and want to do some work on py3k, I'd set up a
236    junction as follows (using the directory structure above as an example):
237
238        C:\..\python\trunk\external <- already exists and has built versions
239                                       of the external subprojects 
240
241        C:\..\python\branches\py3k>linkd.exe external ..\..\trunk\external
242        Link created at: external
243
244    Only a slight tweak would be needed to the buildbots such that bots
245    building trunk and py3k could make use of the same facility.  (2.5.x
246    builds need to be kept separate as they're using Visual Studio 7.1.)
247/XXX trent.nelson 02-Apr-08
248
249Building for Itanium
250--------------------
251
252NOTE:
253Official support for Itanium builds have been dropped from the build. Please
254contact us and provide patches if you are interested in Itanium builds.
255
256The project files support a ReleaseItanium configuration which creates
257Win64/Itanium binaries. For this to work, you need to install the Platform
258SDK, in particular the 64-bit support. This includes an Itanium compiler
259(future releases of the SDK likely include an AMD64 compiler as well).
260In addition, you need the Visual Studio plugin for external C compilers,
261from http://sf.net/projects/vsextcomp. The plugin will wrap cl.exe, to
262locate the proper target compiler, and convert compiler options
263accordingly. The project files require atleast version 0.9.
264
265Building for AMD64
266------------------
267
268The build process for AMD64 / x64 is very similar to standard builds. You just
269have to set x64 as platform. In addition, the HOST_PYTHON environment variable
270must point to a Python interpreter (at least 2.4), to support cross-compilation.
271
272Building Python Using the free MS Toolkit Compiler
273--------------------------------------------------
274
275Microsoft has withdrawn the free MS Toolkit Compiler, so this can no longer
276be considered a supported option. Instead you can use the free VS C++ Express
277Edition.
278
279Profile Guided Optimization
280---------------------------
281
282The solution has two configurations for PGO. The PGInstrument
283configuration must be build first. The PGInstrument binaries are
284lniked against a profiling library and contain extra debug
285information. The PGUpdate configuration takes the profiling data and
286generates optimized binaries.
287
288The build_pgo.bat script automates the creation of optimized binaries. It
289creates the PGI files, runs the unit test suite or PyBench with the PGI
290python and finally creates the optimized files.
291
292http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7k32f4k(VS.90).aspx
293
294Static library
295--------------
296
297The solution has no configuration for static libraries. However it is easy
298it build a static library instead of a DLL. You simply have to set the 
299"Configuration Type" to "Static Library (.lib)" and alter the preprocessor
300macro "Py_ENABLE_SHARED" to "Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED". You may also have to
301change the "Runtime Library" from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to 
302"Multi-threaded (/MT)".
303
304Visual Studio properties
305------------------------
306
307The PCbuild solution makes heavy use of Visual Studio property files 
308(*.vsprops). The properties can be viewed and altered in the Property
309Manager (View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager).
310
311 * debug (debug macro: _DEBUG)
312 * pginstrument (PGO)
313 * pgupdate (PGO)
314    +-- pginstrument
315 * pyd (python extension, release build)
316    +-- release
317    +-- pyproject
318 * pyd_d (python extension, debug build)
319    +-- debug
320    +-- pyproject
321 * pyproject (base settings for all projects, user macros like PyDllName)
322 * release (release macro: NDEBUG)
323 * x64 (AMD64 / x64 platform specific settings)
324
325The pyproject propertyfile defines _WIN32 and x64 defines _WIN64 and _M_X64
326although the macros are set by the compiler, too. The GUI doesn't always know
327about the macros and confuse the user with false information.
328
329YOUR OWN EXTENSION DLLs
330-----------------------
331
332If you want to create your own extension module DLL, there's an example
333with easy-to-follow instructions in ../PC/example/; read the file
334readme.txt there first.