1 Building Python using VC++ 9.0
2 ------------------------------
4 This directory is used to build Python for Win32 and x64 platforms, e.g.
5 Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows Server 2008. In order to build 32-bit
6 debug and release executables, Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition is
7 required at the very least. In order to build 64-bit debug and release
8 executables, Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition is required at the very
9 least. In order to build all of the above, as well as generate release builds
10 that make use of Profile Guided Optimisation (PG0), Visual Studio 2008
11 Professional Edition is required at the very least. The official Python
12 releases are built with this version of Visual Studio.
14 For other Windows platforms and compilers, see ../PC/readme.txt.
16 All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.sln" in Visual Studio,
17 select the desired combination of configuration and platform and eventually
18 build the solution. Unless you are going to debug a problem in the core or
19 you are going to create an optimized build you want to select "Release" as
22 The PCbuild directory is compatible with all versions of Visual Studio from
23 VS C++ Express Edition over the standard edition up to the professional
24 edition. However the express edition does not support features like solution
25 folders or profile guided optimization (PGO). The missing bits and pieces
26 won't stop you from building Python.
28 The solution is configured to build the projects in the correct order. "Build
29 Solution" or F7 takes care of dependencies except for x64 builds. To make
30 cross compiling x64 builds on a 32bit OS possible the x64 builds require a
31 32bit version of Python.
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)
39 When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to
40 their name: python30_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on. Both
41 the build and rt batch files accept a -d option for debug builds.
43 The 32bit builds end up in the solution folder PCbuild while the x64 builds
44 land in the amd64 subfolder. The PGI and PGO builds for profile guided
45 optimization end up in their own folders, too.
50 You can find build directories for older versions of Visual Studio and
51 Visual C++ in the PC directory. The legacy build directories are no longer
52 actively maintained and may not work out of the box.
57 Visual Studio 2003 (7.1)
59 Visual Studio 2005 (8.0)
65 Visual Studio 2008 uses version 9 of the C runtime (MSVCRT9). The executables
66 are linked to a CRT "side by side" assembly which must be present on the target
67 machine. This is avalible under the VC/Redist folder of your visual studio
68 distribution. On XP and later operating systems that support
69 side-by-side assemblies it is not enough to have the msvcrt90.dll present,
70 it has to be there as a whole assembly, that is, a folder with the .dll
71 and a .manifest. Also, a check is made for the correct version.
72 Therefore, one should distribute this assembly with the dlls, and keep
73 it in the same directory. For compatibility with older systems, one should
74 also set the PATH to this directory so that the dll can be found.
75 For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder.
79 These subprojects should build out of the box. Subprojects other than the
80 main 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
82 supporting that module unless they import the module.
89 pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't pop up a DOS box
93 tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and
94 implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c
96 Python wrapper for accelerated XML parsing, which incorporates stable
97 code from the Expat project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/
101 large tables of Unicode data
103 play sounds (typically .wav files) under Windows
105 Python-controlled subprojects that wrap external projects:
107 Wraps Berkeley DB 4.7.25, which is currently built by _bsddb.vcproj.
110 Wraps SQLite 3.6.21, which is currently built by sqlite3.vcproj (see below).
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
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
124 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.5
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. **
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
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.
137 All of this managed to build libbz2.lib in
138 bzip2-1.0.5\$platform-$configuration\, which the Python project links in.
141 Python wrapper for the secure sockets library.
143 Get the source code through
145 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-0.9.8l
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. **
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.
155 You must install the NASM assembler from
157 for x86 builds. Put nasmw.exe anywhere in your PATH.
158 Note: recent releases of nasm only have nasm.exe. Just rename it to
161 You can also install ActivePerl from
162 http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/
163 if you like to use the official sources instead of the files from
164 python's subversion repository. The svn version contains pre-build
165 makefiles and assembly files.
167 The build process makes sure that no patented algorithms are included.
168 For now RC5, MDC2 and IDEA are excluded from the build. You may have
169 to manually remove $(OBJ_D)\i_*.obj from ms\nt.mak if the build process
170 complains about missing files or forbidden IDEA. Again the files provided
171 in the subversion repository are already fixed.
173 The MSVC project simply invokes PCBuild/build_ssl.py to perform
174 the build. This Python script locates and builds your OpenSSL
175 installation, then invokes a simple makefile to build the final .pyd.
177 build_ssl.py attempts to catch the most common errors (such as not
178 being able to find OpenSSL sources, or not being able to find a Perl
179 that works with OpenSSL) and give a reasonable error message.
180 If you have a problem that doesn't seem to be handled correctly
181 (eg, you know you have ActivePerl but we can't find it), please take
182 a peek at build_ssl.py and suggest patches. Note that build_ssl.py
183 should be able to be run directly from the command-line.
185 build_ssl.py/MSVC isn't clever enough to clean OpenSSL - you must do
188 The subprojects above wrap external projects Python doesn't control, and as
189 such, a little more work is required in order to download the relevant source
190 files for each project before they can be built. The buildbots do this each
191 time they're built, so the easiest approach is to run either external.bat or
192 external-amd64.bat in the ..\Tools\buildbot directory from ..\, i.e.:
194 C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk\PCbuild>cd ..
195 C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk>Tools\buildbot\external.bat
197 This extracts all the external subprojects from http://svn.python.org/external
198 via Subversion (so you'll need an svn.exe on your PATH) and places them in
199 ..\.. (relative to this directory). The external(-amd64).bat scripts will
200 also build a debug build of Tcl/Tk; there aren't any equivalent batch files
201 for building release versions of Tcl/Tk lying around in the Tools\buildbot
202 directory. If you need to build a release version of Tcl/Tk it isn't hard
203 though, take a look at the relevant external(-amd64).bat file and find the
204 two nmake lines, then call each one without the 'DEBUG=1' parameter, i.e.:
206 The external-amd64.bat file contains this for tcl:
207 nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 DEBUG=1 MACHINE=AMD64 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk64 clean all install
209 So for a release build, you'd call it as:
210 nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 MACHINE=AMD64 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk64 clean all install
212 XXX Should we compile with OPTS=threads?
213 XXX Our installer copies a lot of stuff out of the Tcl/Tk install
214 XXX directory. Is all of that really needed for Python use of Tcl/Tk?
216 This will be cleaned up in the future; ideally Tcl/Tk will be brought into our
217 pcbuild.sln as custom .vcproj files, just as we've recently done with the
218 _bsddb.vcproj and sqlite3.vcproj files, which will remove the need for
219 Tcl/Tk to be built separately via a batch file.
221 XXX trent.nelson 02-Apr-08:
222 Having the external subprojects in ..\.. relative to this directory is a
223 bit of a nuisance when you're working on py3k and trunk in parallel and
224 your directory layout mimics that of Python's subversion layout, e.g.:
226 C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\trunk
227 C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\branches\py3k
228 C:\..\svn.python.org\projects\python\branches\release25-maint
230 I'd like to change things so that external subprojects are fetched from
231 ..\external instead of ..\.., then provide some helper scripts or batch
232 files that would set up a new ..\external directory with svn checkouts of
233 the relevant branches in http://svn.python.org/projects/external/, or
234 alternatively, use junctions to link ..\external with a pre-existing
235 externals directory being used by another branch. i.e. if I'm usually
236 working on trunk (and have previously created trunk\external via the
237 provided batch file), and want to do some work on py3k, I'd set up a
238 junction as follows (using the directory structure above as an example):
240 C:\..\python\trunk\external <- already exists and has built versions
241 of the external subprojects
243 C:\..\python\branches\py3k>linkd.exe external ..\..\trunk\external
244 Link created at: external
246 Only a slight tweak would be needed to the buildbots such that bots
247 building trunk and py3k could make use of the same facility. (2.5.x
248 builds need to be kept separate as they're using Visual Studio 7.1.)
249 /XXX trent.nelson 02-Apr-08
255 Official support for Itanium builds have been dropped from the build. Please
256 contact us and provide patches if you are interested in Itanium builds.
258 The project files support a ReleaseItanium configuration which creates
259 Win64/Itanium binaries. For this to work, you need to install the Platform
260 SDK, in particular the 64-bit support. This includes an Itanium compiler
261 (future releases of the SDK likely include an AMD64 compiler as well).
262 In addition, you need the Visual Studio plugin for external C compilers,
263 from http://sf.net/projects/vsextcomp. The plugin will wrap cl.exe, to
264 locate the proper target compiler, and convert compiler options
265 accordingly. The project files require atleast version 0.9.
270 The build process for AMD64 / x64 is very similar to standard builds. You just
271 have to set x64 as platform. In addition, the HOST_PYTHON environment variable
272 must point to a Python interpreter (at least 2.4), to support cross-compilation.
274 Building Python Using the free MS Toolkit Compiler
275 --------------------------------------------------
277 Microsoft has withdrawn the free MS Toolkit Compiler, so this can no longer
278 be considered a supported option. Instead you can use the free VS C++ Express
281 Profile Guided Optimization
282 ---------------------------
284 The solution has two configurations for PGO. The PGInstrument
285 configuration must be build first. The PGInstrument binaries are
286 lniked against a profiling library and contain extra debug
287 information. The PGUpdate configuration takes the profiling data and
288 generates optimized binaries.
290 The build_pgo.bat script automates the creation of optimized binaries. It
291 creates the PGI files, runs the unit test suite or PyBench with the PGI
292 python and finally creates the optimized files.
294 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7k32f4k(VS.90).aspx
299 The solution has no configuration for static libraries. However it is easy
300 it build a static library instead of a DLL. You simply have to set the
301 "Configuration Type" to "Static Library (.lib)" and alter the preprocessor
302 macro "Py_ENABLE_SHARED" to "Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED". You may also have to
303 change the "Runtime Library" from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to
304 "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
306 Visual Studio properties
307 ------------------------
309 The PCbuild solution makes heavy use of Visual Studio property files
310 (*.vsprops). The properties can be viewed and altered in the Property
311 Manager (View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager).
313 * debug (debug macro: _DEBUG)
317 * pyd (python extension, release build)
320 * pyd_d (python extension, debug build)
323 * pyproject (base settings for all projects, user macros like PyDllName)
324 * release (release macro: NDEBUG)
325 * x64 (AMD64 / x64 platform specific settings)
327 The pyproject propertyfile defines _WIN32 and x64 defines _WIN64 and _M_X64
328 although the macros are set by the compiler, too. The GUI doesn't always know
329 about the macros and confuse the user with false information.
331 YOUR OWN EXTENSION DLLs
332 -----------------------
334 If you want to create your own extension module DLL, there's an example
335 with easy-to-follow instructions in ../PC/example/; read the file
336 readme.txt there first.