/README
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Possible License(s): 0BSD, BSD-3-Clause
- This is Python version 2.6.4
- ============================
- Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
- Python Software Foundation.
- All rights reserved.
- Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com.
- All rights reserved.
- Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
- All rights reserved.
- Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum.
- All rights reserved.
- License information
- -------------------
- See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this
- software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL
- WARRANTIES.
- This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public Licensed
- (GPLed) code so it may be used in proprietary projects just like prior
- Python distributions. There are interfaces to some GNU code but these
- are entirely optional.
- All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective
- holders.
- What's new in this release?
- ---------------------------
- See the file "Misc/NEWS".
- If you don't read instructions
- ------------------------------
- Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
- To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
- current directory and when it finishes, type "make". This creates an
- executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
- and then "make install".
- The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
- What is Python anyway?
- ----------------------
- Python is an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming
- language suitable (amongst other uses) for distributed application
- development, scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python
- is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or
- Scheme. To find out more about what Python can do for you, point your
- browser to http://www.python.org/.
- How do I learn Python?
- ----------------------
- The official tutorial is still a good place to start; see
- http://docs.python.org/ for online and downloadable versions, as well
- as a list of other introductions, and reference documentation.
- There's a quickly growing set of books on Python. See
- http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
- Documentation
- -------------
- All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats. In
- order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
- Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API. The
- Library Reference is especially of immense value since much of
- Python's power is described there, including the built-in data types
- and functions!
- All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
- (http://docs.python.org/, see below). It is available online for occasional
- reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for faster access. The
- documentation is downloadable in HTML, PostScript, PDF, LaTeX, and
- reStructuredText (2.6+) formats; the LaTeX and reStructuredText versions are
- primarily for documentation authors, translators, and people with special
- formatting requirements.
- Web sites
- ---------
- New Python releases and related technologies are published at
- http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
- There's also a Python community web site at
- http://starship.python.net/.
- Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
- ----------------------------
- Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
- Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
- for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
- mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for an
- overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
- Archives are accessible via the Google Groups Usenet archive; see
- http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
- http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for details.
- Bug reports
- -----------
- To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
- Tracker at http://bugs.python.org.
- Patches and contributions
- -------------------------
- To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
- Manager at http://bugs.python.org. Guidelines
- for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/.
- If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
- comp.lang.python or python-ideas mailing lists for inital feedback. A Python
- Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground. All
- current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
- http://www.python.org/dev/peps/.
- Questions
- ---------
- For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
- best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
- above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
- mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
- who answer questions as they can). The newsgroup is the most
- efficient way to ask public questions.
- Build instructions
- ==================
- Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
- Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
- for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
- type a few commands and sit back. There are some platforms where
- things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
- If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
- tree, see the section on VPATH below.
- Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
- system configuration and creates the Makefile. (It takes a minute or
- two -- please be patient!) You may want to pass options to the
- configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
- variables. When it's done, you are ready to run make.
- To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
- If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
- rebuilt. In this case you may have to run make again to correctly
- build your desired target. The interpreter executable is built in the
- top level directory.
- Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
- testing and installation. If you run into trouble, see the next
- section.
- Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
- involved editing the file Modules/Setup. While this file still exists
- and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
- more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
- guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
- interpreter has been built.
- Troubleshooting
- ---------------
- See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
- If you run into other trouble, see the FAQ
- (http://www.python.org/doc/faq) for hints on what can go wrong, and
- how to fix it.
- If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
- object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
- not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
- problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
- If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
- should be there, inspect the config.log file.
- If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
- longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
- whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
- accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
- is essential for performance (specifically when compiling eval.cc,
- which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
- warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
- the OPT variable.
- If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
- are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
- optimization. This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
- some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
- by turning off optimization. Consider switching to stable versions
- (gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
- From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C. Compiling using
- old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible. ANSI C compilers are
- available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
- compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
- If "make install" fails mysteriously during the "compiling the library"
- step, make sure that you don't have any of the PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME
- environment variables set, as they may interfere with the newly built
- executable which is compiling the library.
- Unsupported systems
- -------------------
- A number of features are not supported in Python 2.5 anymore. Some
- support code is still present, but will be removed in Python 2.6.
- If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
- please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
- volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion
- regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
- as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
- More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
- longer:
- - SunOS 4
- - DYNIX
- - dgux
- - Minix
- - NeXT
- - Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
- - Linux 1
- - Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.in)
- - Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
- or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
- - Systems using --with-dl-dld
- - Systems using --without-universal-newlines
- - MacOS 9
- The following systems are still supported in Python 2.5, but
- support will be dropped in 2.6:
- - Systems using --with-wctype-functions
- - Win9x, WinME
- Warning on install in Windows 98 and Windows Me
- -----------------------------------------------
- Following Microsoft's closing of Extended Support for
- Windows 98/ME (July 11, 2006), Python 2.6 will stop
- supporting these platforms. Python development and
- maintainability becomes easier (and more reliable) when
- platform specific code targeting OSes with few users
- and no dedicated expert developers is taken out. The
- vendor also warns that the OS versions listed above
- "can expose customers to security risks" and recommends
- upgrade.
- Platform specific notes
- -----------------------
- (Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
- on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
- submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
- above) so we can remove them!)
- Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
- 1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
- module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
- default. In Modules/Setup a line like
- bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
- should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
- compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
- XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
- 64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, and imageop don't work.
- The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
- Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
- contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
- fix, let us know!)
- Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
- 2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
- way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
- the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
- script).
- When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
- versions built using it. This mistakenly enables the
- -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
- Solaris. binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
- are aware of the problem. Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
- fixed things. It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
- completely. This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
- and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
- OS.
- When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
- libraries, such as
- ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
- No such file or directory
- you need to first make sure that the library is available on
- your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
- to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
- 1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
- containing missing libraries.
- 2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
- 3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
- 4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
- *link: section.
- The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
- least up to 3.4.3). To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
- HUGE_VAL(), e.g.:
- make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
- ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
- Linux: A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
- the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
- solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
- problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
- Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
- Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
- need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
- There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
- 1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
- require this version. Python 2.1.x may be installed as
- /usr/bin/python2. The Makefile installs Python as
- /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
- over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
- FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
- similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
- the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
- the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
- cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
- called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
- required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
- automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
- BSDI: BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
- which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
- instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
- Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
- BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
- DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
- --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
- default). When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
- compiler error if optimization is used. This was reported for
- GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile the affected
- file without optimization to solve the problem.
- DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
- and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
- AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
- place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
- (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
- has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
- errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
- testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
- like "cc_r". For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
- CC="xlC" without thread support).
- AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
- following:
- export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
- ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
- --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
- make
- HP-UX: When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
- OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight,
- this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
- even though pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
- using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
- box".
- HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
- compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
- optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
- (see http://www.python.org/sf/814976). To work around this,
- edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
- To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
- compiler, use these environment variables:
- CC=cc
- CXX=aCC
- BASECFLAGS="+DD64"
- LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
- and call configure as:
- ./configure --without-gcc
- then *unset* the environment variables again before running
- make. (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
- if it remains set.) You still have to edit the Makefile and
- remove -O from the OPT line.
- HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://www.python.org/sf/546117)
- suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
- in the optimizer that break Python. Compiling without
- optimization solves the problems.
- SCO: The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
- on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
- 1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
- defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
- Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
- conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
- 2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
- stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
- needed be set to:
- LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
- UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
- problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
- thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
- tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
- QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
- configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
- ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
- test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
- 1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
- ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
- 2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
- your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
- array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
- crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
- _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
- posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop,
- select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
- syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop
- 3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
- or, if you feel the need for speed:
- make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
- 4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
- Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
- think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
- 5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
- If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
- I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
- probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
- little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
- to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
- BeOS: See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
- Python on BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC
- platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
- supported for R4.
- Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
- Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
- my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
- there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
- thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
- Python on Cray T3E".
- 1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
- work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
- 2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
- following environment variable to the configure script:
- MACHDEP=unicosmk
- 2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
- 3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
- modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
- in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
- posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
- On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
- included successfully:
- _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
- array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
- errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
- regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
- time, timing, xreadlines
- 4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
- will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
- extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
- will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
- normal.
- 5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
- problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
- singly or in small groups.
- SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
- does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
- is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
- it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
- smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
- you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
- smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
- WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
- SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
- behavior, especially on numerical operations. To avoid this,
- try building with "make OPT=".
- OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
- compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
- and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
- in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
- Monterey (64-bit AIX): The current Monterey C compiler (Visual Age)
- uses the OBJECT_MODE={32|64} environment variable to set the
- compilation mode to either 32-bit or 64-bit (32-bit mode is
- the default). Presumably you want 64-bit compilation mode for
- this 64-bit OS. As a result you must first set OBJECT_MODE=64
- in your environment before configuring (./configure) or
- building (make) Python on Monterey.
- Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
- there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
- platform as well. This should be resolved in time for a
- future release.
- MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
- test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size. If
- you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
- failure can be avoided. If you're using the tcsh or csh shells,
- use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the bash shell (the default
- as of OSX 10.3), use "ulimit -s 2048".
- On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
- "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
- interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
- if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
- On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
- "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
- before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
- do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
- as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
- additions.
- Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
- to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all
- references to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
- You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
- which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
- as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
- /Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
- want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
- Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
- You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
- which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the
- i386 and PPC architetures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
- See Mac/README for more information on framework and
- universal builds.
- Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
- Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
- of dynamic linking and fork(). This manifests itself in build
- failures during the execution of setup.py.
- There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
- without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
- NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
- on XP would be appreciated).
- The workarounds:
- (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
- rather than dynamically (which is the default).
- To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
- other options you need (--prefix, etc.). Then in Modules/Setup
- uncomment the lines:
- #SSL=/usr/local/ssl
- #_socket socketmodule.c \
- # -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
- # -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
- and remove "local/" from the SSL variable. Finally, just run
- "make"!
- (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
- base address conflicts. Details on how to do this can be
- found in the following mail:
- http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
- It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
- incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
- Two additional problems:
- (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
- bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
- hang.
- (2) The _curses module does not build. This is a known
- Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
- that this package is released.
- On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
- may fail.
- The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
- Some time ago, there were reports that the following
- regression tests failed:
- test_pwd
- test_select (hang)
- test_socket
- Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
- regression test using the following:
- make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
- News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
- versions would be appreciated!
- Windows: When executing Python scripts on the command line using file type
- associations (i.e. starting "script.py" instead of "python script.py"),
- redirects may not work unless you set a specific registry key. See
- the Knowledge Base article <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321788>.
- Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
- -------------------------------------
- Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
- <http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
- exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
- backwards-compatible behavior. Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
- Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
- aren't supported through this interface. The old bsddb module has
- been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default. Users
- wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it. The
- dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
- other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
- Building the sqlite3 module
- ---------------------------
- To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
- packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
- systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
- often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
- -devel suffix.
- The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
- or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
- Configuring threads
- -------------------
- As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default. If you wish to
- compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
- --with-threads=no switch to configure. Unfortunately, on some
- platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
- threads to work properly. Below is a table of those options,
- collected by Bill Janssen. We would love to automate this process
- more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
- configure.in file, so manual intervention is required. If you patch
- the configure.in file and are confident that the patch works, please
- send in the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
- -- it is regenerated each time the configure.in file changes.)
- Compiler switches for threads
- .............................
- The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
- that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
- incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
- OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
- (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) compile & link
- SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris -mt
- SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (nothing)
- DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE -threads
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE -threads
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX -pthread
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
- (buhrt@iquest.net)
- AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
- (buhrt@iquest.net)
- IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
- (robertl@cwi.nl)
- Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
- ...........................................
- OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
- SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
- SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
- DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
- (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
- AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
- (buhrt@iquest.net)
- IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
- (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
- Building a shared libpython
- ---------------------------
- Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
- into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
- executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
- configure with --enable-shared.
- If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
- a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
- files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
- are needed for the shared library.
- Configuring additional built-in modules
- ---------------------------------------
- Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
- distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
- automatically compiles them. Autodetection doesn't always work, so
- you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
- file; but this should be considered a last resort. The rest of this
- section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
- You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
- is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
- This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
- if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
- yourself (configure will never overwrite it). Never edit Setup.dist
- -- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below). Read the comments in
- the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed. When you
- have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
- automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
- directory).
- Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
- modules can't be reliably autodetected. Often the quickest way to
- determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
- will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
- errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
- the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
- On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
- system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware. These
- modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
- In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
- (the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
- convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
- installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
- file.
- Setting the optimization/debugging options
- ------------------------------------------
- If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
- the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
- command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
- on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
- environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
- (likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
- set of libraries to link with).
- When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
- the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
- Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
- be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
- For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
- variable.
- Profiling
- ---------
- If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
- with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
- invocation. For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
- gprof(1):
- CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
- Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
- libraries. The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
- link most extension modules statically.
- Coverage checking
- -----------------
- For C coverage checking using gcov, run "make coverage". This will
- build a Python binary with profiling activated, and a ".gcno" and
- ".gcda" file for every source file compiled with that option. With
- the built binary, now run the code whose coverage you want to check.
- Then, you can see coverage statistics for each individual source file
- by running gcov, e.g.
- gcov -o Modules zlibmodule
- This will create a "zlibmodule.c.gcov" file in the current directory
- containing coverage info for that source file.
- This works only for source files statically compiled into the
- executable; use the Makefile/Setup mechanism to compile and link
- extension modules you want to coverage-check statically.
- Testing
- -------
- To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
- This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
- the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
- produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
- skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
- If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
- dump is produced, something is wrong. On some Linux systems (those
- that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
- non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
- ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
- IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
- *don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
- failing test manually, as follows:
- ./python ./Lib/test/test_whatever.py
- (substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
- different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
- Installing
- ----------
- To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
- (see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
- just type
- make install
- This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
- the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
- `prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local). All binary and other
- platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
- directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
- (defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
- If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
- installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
- $(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
- All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
- name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
- "/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
- <major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1"). The Python binary is
- installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
- created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
- name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
- by default.
- If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
- entitled "Installing multiple versions".
- The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
- Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
- versions of Emacs may already have it.) Follow the instructions that
- came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
- On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
- should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
- installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
- PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
- Installing multiple versions
- ----------------------------
- On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
- using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
- script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
- overwritten by the installation of a different versio. All files and
- directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
- version and can thus live side-by-side. "make install" also creates
- ${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you intend
- to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
- version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using
- "make install". Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
- For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
- the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
- directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
- Configuration options and variables
- -----------------------------------
- Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
- script.
- WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
- must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
- after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
- Modules/getpath.o.
- --with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
- it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
- installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
- --without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
- name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
- advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
- remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
- option.
- --prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
- Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
- you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
- binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
- library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
- --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
- installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
- interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
- affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
- Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
- prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
- prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
- than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
- about the install prefix.
- --with-readline: This option is no longer supported. GNU
- readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
- --with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
- threads, and support for this is enabled by default. To
- disable this, pass --with-threads=no. If the library required
- for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
- --with-thread=DIRECTORY. IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
- changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
- will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
- --with-dec-threads instead.
- --with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
- supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
- ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
- This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
- library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
- is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
- IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
- shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
- --with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
- on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
- Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
- combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
- (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
- emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
- can be found at
- ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
- enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
- configure, passing it the option
- --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
- the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
- DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
- (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
- linking using shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
- --with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
- versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
- (default the empty string) using the options
- --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. For
- example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
- compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
- --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
- libraries, the C library last.
- --with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
- is linked against.
- --with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
- then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
- function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
- <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
- It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
- runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
- There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
- with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
- E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
- a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
- --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
- between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
- build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
- runtime.
- The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
- determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
- to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
- line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
- change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
- --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
- In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
- some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
- CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
- C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
- Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
- python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
- --with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
- memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
- live objects when the interpreter terminates.
- --with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
- foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
- any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
- If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
- in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
- read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
- --with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
- --with-system-ffi: Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
- library installed on the system.
- Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
- -------------------------------------------------------------
- If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
- usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
- architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
- VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
- architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
- appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
- necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
- contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
- actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
- you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
- For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
- in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
- directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
- $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
- $ cd /usr/tmp/python
- $ ~guido/src/python/configure
- [...]
- $ make
- [...]
- $
- Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
- directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
- edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
- reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
- automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
- of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
- makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
- fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
- doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
- however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
- Also note that you can't use a workspace for VPATH and non VPATH builds. The
- object files left behind by one version confuses the other.
- Building on non-UNIX systems
- ----------------------------
- For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
- project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. See
- PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
- For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
- for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
- For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
- for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
- development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
- (http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
- pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
- Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
- platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
- To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
- effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
- has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
- pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
- configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
- 1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
- otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
- variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
- For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
- preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
- build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
- release-build performance). The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
- do this.
- Miscellaneous issues
- ====================
- Emacs mode
- ----------
- There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
- Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it
- is now maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw (it's no
- coincidence that they now both work on the same team). The latest
- version, along with various other contributed Python-related Emacs
- goodies, is online at http://www.python.org/emacs/python-mode. And
- if you are planning to edit the Python C code, please pick up the
- latest version of CC Mode http://www.python.org/emacs/cc-mode; it
- contains a "python" style used throughout most of the Python C source
- files. (Newer versions of Emacs or XEmacs may already come with the
- latest version of python-mode.)
- Tkinter
- -------
- The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
- usable Tcl/Tk installation. This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
- higher.
- For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
- http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
- There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
- Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
- lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
- (lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
- Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
- Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
- module. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
- and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
- this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
- set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
- Distribution structure
- ----------------------
- Most subdirectories have their own README files. Most files have
- comments.
- Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
- Doc/ Documentation sources (reStructuredText)
- Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
- Include/ Public header files
- LICENSE Licensing information
- Lib/ Python library modules
- Mac/ Macintosh specific resources
- Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
- Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
- Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
- Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
- PC/ Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
- PCbuild/ Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
- Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
- Python/ The byte-compiler and interpreter
- README The file you're reading now
- RISCOS/ Files specific to RISC OS port
- Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
- pyconfig.h.in Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
- configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
- configure.in Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
- install-sh Shell script used to install files
- setup.py Python script used to build extension modules
- The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
- the configuration and build processes:
- Makefile Build rules
- Makefile.pre Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
- buildno Keeps track of the build number
- config.cache Cache of configuration variables
- pyconfig.h Configuration header
- config.log Log from last configure run
- config.status Status from last run of the configure script
- getbuildinfo.o Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
- libpython<version>.a The library archive
- python The executable interpreter
- reflog.txt Output from running the regression suite with the -R flag
- tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
- That's all, folks!
- ------------------
- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)