1 This is Python version 2.7.3
2 ============================
4 Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011,
5 2012 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
7 Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com.
10 Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
13 Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum.
20 See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this
21 software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL
24 This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public Licensed
25 (GPLed) code so it may be used in proprietary projects just like prior
26 Python distributions. There are interfaces to some GNU code but these
27 are entirely optional.
29 All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective
33 What's new in this release?
34 ---------------------------
36 See the file "Misc/NEWS".
39 If you don't read instructions
40 ------------------------------
42 Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
44 To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
45 current directory and when it finishes, type "make". This creates an
46 executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
47 and then "make install".
49 The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
52 What is Python anyway?
53 ----------------------
55 Python is an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming
56 language suitable (amongst other uses) for distributed application
57 development, scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python
58 is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or
59 Scheme. To find out more about what Python can do for you, point your
60 browser to http://www.python.org/.
63 How do I learn Python?
64 ----------------------
66 The official tutorial is still a good place to start; see
67 http://docs.python.org/ for online and downloadable versions, as well
68 as a list of other introductions, and reference documentation.
70 There's a quickly growing set of books on Python. See
71 http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
77 All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats. In
78 order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
79 Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API. The
80 Library Reference is especially of immense value since much of
81 Python's power is described there, including the built-in data types
84 All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
85 (http://docs.python.org/, see below). It is available online for occasional
86 reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for faster access. The
87 documentation is downloadable in HTML, PostScript, PDF, LaTeX, and
88 reStructuredText (2.6+) formats; the LaTeX and reStructuredText versions are
89 primarily for documentation authors, translators, and people with special
90 formatting requirements.
96 New Python releases and related technologies are published at
97 http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
100 Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
101 ----------------------------
103 Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
104 Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
105 for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
106 mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for an
107 overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
109 Archives are accessible via the Google Groups Usenet archive; see
110 http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
111 http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for details.
117 To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
118 Tracker at http://bugs.python.org/.
121 Patches and contributions
122 -------------------------
124 To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
125 Manager at http://bugs.python.org/. Guidelines
126 for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/.
128 If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
129 comp.lang.python or python-ideas mailing lists for inital feedback. A Python
130 Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground. All
131 current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
132 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/.
138 For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
139 best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
140 above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
141 mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
142 who answer questions as they can). The newsgroup is the most
143 efficient way to ask public questions.
149 Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
150 Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
151 for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
152 type a few commands and sit back. There are some platforms where
153 things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
154 If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
155 tree, see the section on VPATH below.
157 Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
158 system configuration and creates the Makefile. (It takes a minute or
159 two -- please be patient!) You may want to pass options to the
160 configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
161 variables. When it's done, you are ready to run make.
163 To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
164 If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
165 rebuilt. In this case, you may have to run make again to correctly
166 build your desired target. The interpreter executable is built in the
169 Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
170 testing and installation. If you run into trouble, see the next
173 Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
174 involved editing the file Modules/Setup. While this file still exists
175 and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
176 more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
177 guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
178 interpreter has been built.
184 See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
186 If you run into other trouble, see the FAQ
187 (http://www.python.org/doc/faq/) for hints on what can go wrong, and
190 If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
191 object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
192 not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
193 problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
195 If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
196 should be there, inspect the config.log file.
198 If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
199 longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
200 whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
201 accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
202 is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
203 which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
204 warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
207 If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
208 are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
209 optimization. This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
210 some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
211 by turning off optimization. Consider switching to stable versions
212 (gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
214 From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C. Compiling using
215 old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible. ANSI C compilers are
216 available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
217 compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
219 If "make install" fails mysteriously during the "compiling the library"
220 step, make sure that you don't have any of the PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME
221 environment variables set, as they may interfere with the newly built
222 executable which is compiling the library.
227 A number of systems are not supported in Python 2.7 anymore. Some
228 support code is still present, but will be removed in later versions.
229 If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
230 please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
231 volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion
232 regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
233 as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
235 More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
242 - Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
244 - Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.in)
245 - Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
246 or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
247 - Systems using --with-dl-dld
248 - Systems using --without-universal-newlines
250 - Systems using --with-wctype-functions
254 Platform specific notes
255 -----------------------
257 (Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
258 on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
259 submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
260 above) so we can remove them!)
262 Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
263 1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
264 module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
265 default. In Modules/Setup a line like
267 bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
269 should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
270 compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
272 XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
274 64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, and imageop don't work.
275 The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
276 Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
277 contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
280 Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
281 2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
282 way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
283 the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
286 When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
287 versions built using it. This mistakenly enables the
288 -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
289 Solaris. binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
290 are aware of the problem. Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
291 fixed things. It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
292 completely. This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
293 and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
296 When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
299 ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
300 No such file or directory
302 you need to first make sure that the library is available on
303 your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
304 to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
306 1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
307 containing missing libraries.
308 2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
309 3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
310 4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
313 The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
314 least up to 3.4.3). To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
317 make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
318 ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
320 Linux: A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
321 the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
322 solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
323 problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
325 Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
326 Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
327 need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
329 There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
330 1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
331 require this version. Python 2.1.x may be installed as
332 /usr/bin/python2. The Makefile installs Python as
333 /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
334 over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
336 FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
337 similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
338 the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
339 the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
340 cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
341 called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
342 required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
343 automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
345 BSDI: BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
346 which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
347 instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
348 Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
349 BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
351 DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
352 --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
353 default). When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
354 compiler error if optimization is used. This was reported for
355 GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile the affected
356 file without optimization to solve the problem.
358 DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
359 and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
361 AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
362 place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
363 (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
364 has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
365 errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
366 testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
367 like "cc_r". For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
368 CC="xlC" without thread support).
370 AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
373 export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
374 ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
375 --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
378 HP-UX: When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
379 OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight,
380 this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
381 even though pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
382 using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
385 HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
386 compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
387 optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
388 (see http://bugs.python.org/814976). To work around this,
389 edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
391 To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
392 compiler, use these environment variables:
397 LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
399 and call configure as:
401 ./configure --without-gcc
403 then *unset* the environment variables again before running
404 make. (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
405 if it remains set.) You still have to edit the Makefile and
406 remove -O from the OPT line.
408 HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://bugs.python.org/546117)
409 suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
410 in the optimizer that break Python. Compiling without
411 optimization solves the problems.
413 SCO: The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
414 on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
416 1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
417 defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
418 Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
419 conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
421 2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
422 stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
425 LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
427 UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
428 problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
429 thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
430 tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
432 QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
433 configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
434 ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
435 test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
437 1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
438 ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
440 2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
441 your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
443 array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
444 crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
445 _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
446 posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop,
447 select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
448 syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop
450 3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
452 or, if you feel the need for speed:
454 make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
456 4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
458 Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
459 think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
461 5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
463 If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
464 I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
465 probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
466 little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
467 to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
469 BeOS: See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
470 Python on BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC
471 platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
474 Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
475 Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
476 my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
477 there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
478 thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
481 1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
482 work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
484 2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
485 following environment variable to the configure script:
489 2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
491 3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
492 modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
493 in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
495 posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
497 On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
498 included successfully:
500 _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
501 array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
502 errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
503 regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
504 time, timing, xreadlines
506 4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
507 will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
508 extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
509 will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
512 5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
513 problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
514 singly or in small groups.
516 SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
517 does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
518 is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
519 it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
520 smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
521 you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
522 smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
524 WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
525 SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
526 behavior, especially on numerical operations. To avoid this,
527 try building with "make OPT=".
529 OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
530 compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
531 and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
532 in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
534 Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
535 there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
536 platform as well. This should be resolved in time for a
539 MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
540 test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size. If
541 you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
542 failure can be avoided. If you're using the tcsh or csh shells,
543 use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the bash shell (the default
544 as of OSX 10.3), use "ulimit -s 2048".
546 On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
547 "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
548 interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
549 if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
551 On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
552 "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
553 before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
554 do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
555 as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
558 Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
559 to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all
560 references to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
562 You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
563 which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
564 as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
565 /Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
566 want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
567 Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
569 You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
570 which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the
571 i386 and PPC architetures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
573 See Mac/README for more information on framework and
576 Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
577 Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
578 of dynamic linking and fork(). This manifests itself in build
579 failures during the execution of setup.py.
581 There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
582 without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
583 NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
584 on XP would be appreciated).
588 (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
589 rather than dynamically (which is the default).
591 To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
592 other options you need (--prefix, etc.). Then in Modules/Setup
596 #_socket socketmodule.c \
597 # -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
598 # -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
600 and remove "local/" from the SSL variable. Finally, just run
603 (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
604 base address conflicts. Details on how to do this can be
605 found in the following mail:
607 http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
609 It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
610 incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
612 Two additional problems:
614 (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
615 bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
618 (2) The _curses module does not build. This is a known
619 Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
620 that this package is released.
622 On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
625 The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
626 Some time ago, there were reports that the following
627 regression tests failed:
633 Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
634 regression test using the following:
636 make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
638 News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
639 versions would be appreciated!
641 Windows: When executing Python scripts on the command line using file type
642 associations (i.e. starting "script.py" instead of "python script.py"),
643 redirects may not work unless you set a specific registry key. See
644 the Knowledge Base article <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321788>.
647 Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
648 -------------------------------------
650 Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
651 <http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
652 exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
653 backwards-compatible behavior. Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
654 Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
655 aren't supported through this interface. The old bsddb module has
656 been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default. Users
657 wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it. The
658 dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
659 other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
661 Building the sqlite3 module
662 ---------------------------
664 To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
665 packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
666 systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
667 often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
670 The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
671 or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
676 As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default. If you wish to
677 compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
678 --with-threads=no switch to configure. Unfortunately, on some
679 platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
680 threads to work properly. Below is a table of those options,
681 collected by Bill Janssen. We would love to automate this process
682 more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
683 configure.in file, so manual intervention is required. If you patch
684 the configure.in file and are confident that the patch works, please
685 send in the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
686 -- it is regenerated each time the configure.in file changes.)
688 Compiler switches for threads
689 .............................
691 The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
692 that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
693 incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
695 OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
696 (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) compile & link
698 SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris -mt
699 SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (nothing)
700 DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE -threads
701 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
702 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE -threads
703 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
704 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX -pthread
705 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
706 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
708 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
710 IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
714 Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
715 ...........................................
717 OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
719 SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
720 SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
721 DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
722 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
723 Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
724 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
725 Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
726 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
727 AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
729 IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
730 (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
733 Building a shared libpython
734 ---------------------------
736 Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
737 into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
738 executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
739 configure with --enable-shared.
741 If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
742 a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
743 files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
744 are needed for the shared library.
747 Configuring additional built-in modules
748 ---------------------------------------
750 Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
751 distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
752 automatically compiles them. Autodetection doesn't always work, so
753 you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
754 file; but this should be considered a last resort. The rest of this
755 section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
756 You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
757 is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
759 This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
760 if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
761 yourself (configure will never overwrite it). Never edit Setup.dist
762 -- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below). Read the comments in
763 the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed. When you
764 have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
765 automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
768 Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
769 modules can't be reliably autodetected. Often the quickest way to
770 determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
771 will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
772 errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
773 the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
775 On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
776 system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware. These
777 modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
779 In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
780 (the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
781 convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
782 installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
786 Setting the optimization/debugging options
787 ------------------------------------------
789 If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
790 the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
791 command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
792 on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
793 environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
794 (likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
795 set of libraries to link with).
797 When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
798 the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
800 Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
801 be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
803 For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
810 If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
811 with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
812 invocation. For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
815 CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
817 Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
818 libraries. The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
819 link most extension modules statically.
825 For C coverage checking using gcov, run "make coverage". This will
826 build a Python binary with profiling activated, and a ".gcno" and
827 ".gcda" file for every source file compiled with that option. With
828 the built binary, now run the code whose coverage you want to check.
829 Then, you can see coverage statistics for each individual source file
830 by running gcov, e.g.
832 gcov -o Modules zlibmodule
834 This will create a "zlibmodule.c.gcov" file in the current directory
835 containing coverage info for that source file.
837 This works only for source files statically compiled into the
838 executable; use the Makefile/Setup mechanism to compile and link
839 extension modules you want to coverage-check statically.
845 To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
846 This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
847 the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
848 produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
849 skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
850 If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
851 dump is produced, something is wrong. On some Linux systems (those
852 that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
853 non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
854 ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
856 By default, tests are prevented from overusing resources like disk space and
857 memory. To enable these tests, run "make testall".
859 IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
860 *don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
861 failing test manually, as follows:
863 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -v test_whatever
865 (substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
866 different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
872 To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
873 (see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
878 This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
879 the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
880 `prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local). All binary and other
881 platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
882 directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
883 (defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
885 If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
886 installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
887 $(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
889 All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
890 name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
891 "/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
892 <major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1"). The Python binary is
893 installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
894 created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
895 name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
898 If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
899 entitled "Installing multiple versions".
901 The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
902 Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
903 versions of Emacs may already have it.) Follow the instructions that
904 came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
906 On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
907 should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
908 installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
909 PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
912 Installing multiple versions
913 ----------------------------
915 On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
916 using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
917 script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
918 overwritten by the installation of a different version. All files and
919 directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
920 version and can thus live side-by-side. "make install" also creates
921 ${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you intend
922 to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
923 version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using
924 "make install". Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
926 For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
927 the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
928 directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
931 Configuration options and variables
932 -----------------------------------
934 Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
937 WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
938 must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
939 after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
942 --with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
943 it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
944 installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
945 --without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
946 name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
947 advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
948 remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
951 --prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
952 Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
953 you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
954 binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
955 library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
956 --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
957 installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
958 interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
959 affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
960 Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
961 prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
962 prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
963 than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
964 about the install prefix.
966 --with-readline: This option is no longer supported. GNU
967 readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
969 --with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
970 threads, and support for this is enabled by default. To
971 disable this, pass --with-threads=no. If the library required
972 for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
973 --with-thread=DIRECTORY. IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
974 changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
975 will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
976 --with-dec-threads instead.
978 --with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
979 supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
980 ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
981 This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
982 library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
983 is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
984 IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
985 shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
987 --with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
988 on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
989 Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
990 combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
991 (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
992 emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
994 ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
995 enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
996 configure, passing it the option
997 --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
998 the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
999 DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
1000 (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
1001 linking using shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1003 --with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
1004 versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
1005 (default the empty string) using the options
1006 --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. For
1007 example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
1008 compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
1009 --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
1010 libraries, the C library last.
1012 --with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
1015 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
1016 then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
1017 function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
1018 <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
1019 It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
1020 runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
1022 There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
1023 with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
1024 E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
1025 a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
1026 --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
1027 between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
1028 build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
1031 The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
1032 determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
1033 to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
1034 line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
1035 change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
1036 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
1037 In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
1038 some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
1039 CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
1040 C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
1042 Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
1043 python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
1046 --with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
1047 memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
1048 live objects when the interpreter terminates.
1050 --with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
1051 foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
1052 any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
1053 If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
1054 in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
1055 read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1057 --with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
1059 --with-system-ffi: Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
1060 library installed on the system.
1062 --with-dbmliborder=db1:db2:...: Specify the order that backends for the
1063 dbm extension are checked. Valid value is a colon separated string
1064 with the backend names `ndbm', `gdbm' and `bdb'.
1066 Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
1067 -------------------------------------------------------------
1069 If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
1070 usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
1071 architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
1072 VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
1073 architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
1074 appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
1075 necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
1076 contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
1077 actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
1078 you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
1080 For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
1081 in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
1082 directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
1084 $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
1085 $ cd /usr/tmp/python
1086 $ ~guido/src/python/configure
1092 Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
1093 directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
1094 edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
1095 reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
1096 automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
1097 of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
1098 makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
1099 fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
1100 doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
1101 however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
1103 Also note that you can't use a workspace for VPATH and non VPATH builds. The
1104 object files left behind by one version confuses the other.
1107 Building on non-UNIX systems
1108 ----------------------------
1110 For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
1111 project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. See
1112 PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
1114 For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
1115 for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
1117 For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
1118 for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
1119 development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
1120 (http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
1121 pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
1123 Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
1124 platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
1126 To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
1127 effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
1128 has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
1129 pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
1130 configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
1131 1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
1132 otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
1133 variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
1135 For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
1136 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
1137 build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
1138 release-build performance). The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
1142 Miscellaneous issues
1143 ====================
1148 There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
1149 Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it is now
1150 maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw. The latest version, along with
1151 various other contributed Python-related Emacs goodies, is online at
1152 http://launchpad.net/python-mode/.
1158 The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
1159 usable Tcl/Tk installation. This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
1162 For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
1163 http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
1165 There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
1167 Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
1168 lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
1169 (lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
1170 Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
1171 Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
1172 module. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
1173 and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
1174 this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
1175 set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
1178 Distribution structure
1179 ----------------------
1181 Most subdirectories have their own README files. Most files have
1184 Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
1185 Doc/ Documentation sources (reStructuredText)
1186 Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
1187 Include/ Public header files
1188 LICENSE Licensing information
1189 Lib/ Python library modules
1190 Mac/ Macintosh specific resources
1191 Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
1192 Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
1193 Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
1194 Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
1195 PC/ Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
1196 PCbuild/ Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
1197 Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
1198 Python/ The byte-compiler and interpreter
1199 README The file you're reading now
1200 RISCOS/ Files specific to RISC OS port
1201 Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
1202 pyconfig.h.in Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
1203 configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
1204 configure.in Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
1205 install-sh Shell script used to install files
1206 setup.py Python script used to build extension modules
1208 The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
1209 the configuration and build processes:
1211 Makefile Build rules
1212 Makefile.pre Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
1213 buildno Keeps track of the build number
1214 config.cache Cache of configuration variables
1215 pyconfig.h Configuration header
1216 config.log Log from last configure run
1217 config.status Status from last run of the configure script
1218 getbuildinfo.o Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
1219 libpython<version>.a The library archive
1220 python The executable interpreter
1221 reflog.txt Output from running the regression suite with the -R flag
1222 tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
1229 --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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