1 This is Python version 2.7.1
2 ============================
4 Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
5 Python Software Foundation.
8 Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com.
11 Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
14 Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum.
21 See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this
22 software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL
25 This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public Licensed
26 (GPLed) code so it may be used in proprietary projects just like prior
27 Python distributions. There are interfaces to some GNU code but these
28 are entirely optional.
30 All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective
34 What's new in this release?
35 ---------------------------
37 See the file "Misc/NEWS".
40 If you don't read instructions
41 ------------------------------
43 Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
45 To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
46 current directory and when it finishes, type "make". This creates an
47 executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
48 and then "make install".
50 The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
53 What is Python anyway?
54 ----------------------
56 Python is an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming
57 language suitable (amongst other uses) for distributed application
58 development, scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python
59 is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or
60 Scheme. To find out more about what Python can do for you, point your
61 browser to http://www.python.org/.
64 How do I learn Python?
65 ----------------------
67 The official tutorial is still a good place to start; see
68 http://docs.python.org/ for online and downloadable versions, as well
69 as a list of other introductions, and reference documentation.
71 There's a quickly growing set of books on Python. See
72 http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
78 All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats. In
79 order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
80 Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API. The
81 Library Reference is especially of immense value since much of
82 Python's power is described there, including the built-in data types
85 All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
86 (http://docs.python.org/, see below). It is available online for occasional
87 reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for faster access. The
88 documentation is downloadable in HTML, PostScript, PDF, LaTeX, and
89 reStructuredText (2.6+) formats; the LaTeX and reStructuredText versions are
90 primarily for documentation authors, translators, and people with special
91 formatting requirements.
97 New Python releases and related technologies are published at
98 http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
101 Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
102 ----------------------------
104 Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
105 Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
106 for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
107 mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for an
108 overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
110 Archives are accessible via the Google Groups Usenet archive; see
111 http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
112 http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for details.
118 To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
119 Tracker at http://bugs.python.org/.
122 Patches and contributions
123 -------------------------
125 To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
126 Manager at http://bugs.python.org/. Guidelines
127 for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/.
129 If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
130 comp.lang.python or python-ideas mailing lists for inital feedback. A Python
131 Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground. All
132 current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
133 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/.
139 For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
140 best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
141 above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
142 mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
143 who answer questions as they can). The newsgroup is the most
144 efficient way to ask public questions.
150 Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
151 Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
152 for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
153 type a few commands and sit back. There are some platforms where
154 things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
155 If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
156 tree, see the section on VPATH below.
158 Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
159 system configuration and creates the Makefile. (It takes a minute or
160 two -- please be patient!) You may want to pass options to the
161 configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
162 variables. When it's done, you are ready to run make.
164 To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
165 If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
166 rebuilt. In this case, you may have to run make again to correctly
167 build your desired target. The interpreter executable is built in the
170 Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
171 testing and installation. If you run into trouble, see the next
174 Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
175 involved editing the file Modules/Setup. While this file still exists
176 and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
177 more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
178 guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
179 interpreter has been built.
185 See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
187 If you run into other trouble, see the FAQ
188 (http://www.python.org/doc/faq/) for hints on what can go wrong, and
191 If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
192 object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
193 not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
194 problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
196 If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
197 should be there, inspect the config.log file.
199 If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
200 longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
201 whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
202 accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
203 is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
204 which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
205 warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
208 If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
209 are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
210 optimization. This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
211 some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
212 by turning off optimization. Consider switching to stable versions
213 (gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
215 From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C. Compiling using
216 old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible. ANSI C compilers are
217 available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
218 compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
220 If "make install" fails mysteriously during the "compiling the library"
221 step, make sure that you don't have any of the PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME
222 environment variables set, as they may interfere with the newly built
223 executable which is compiling the library.
228 A number of systems are not supported in Python 2.7 anymore. Some
229 support code is still present, but will be removed in later versions.
230 If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
231 please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
232 volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion
233 regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
234 as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
236 More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
243 - Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
245 - Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.in)
246 - Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
247 or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
248 - Systems using --with-dl-dld
249 - Systems using --without-universal-newlines
251 - Systems using --with-wctype-functions
255 Platform specific notes
256 -----------------------
258 (Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
259 on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
260 submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
261 above) so we can remove them!)
263 Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
264 1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
265 module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
266 default. In Modules/Setup a line like
268 bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
270 should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
271 compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
273 XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
275 64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, and imageop don't work.
276 The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
277 Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
278 contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
281 Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
282 2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
283 way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
284 the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
287 When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
288 versions built using it. This mistakenly enables the
289 -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
290 Solaris. binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
291 are aware of the problem. Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
292 fixed things. It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
293 completely. This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
294 and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
297 When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
300 ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
301 No such file or directory
303 you need to first make sure that the library is available on
304 your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
305 to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
307 1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
308 containing missing libraries.
309 2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
310 3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
311 4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
314 The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
315 least up to 3.4.3). To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
318 make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
319 ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
321 Linux: A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
322 the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
323 solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
324 problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
326 Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
327 Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
328 need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
330 There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
331 1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
332 require this version. Python 2.1.x may be installed as
333 /usr/bin/python2. The Makefile installs Python as
334 /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
335 over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
337 FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
338 similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
339 the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
340 the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
341 cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
342 called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
343 required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
344 automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
346 BSDI: BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
347 which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
348 instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
349 Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
350 BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
352 DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
353 --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
354 default). When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
355 compiler error if optimization is used. This was reported for
356 GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile the affected
357 file without optimization to solve the problem.
359 DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
360 and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
362 AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
363 place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
364 (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
365 has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
366 errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
367 testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
368 like "cc_r". For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
369 CC="xlC" without thread support).
371 AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
374 export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
375 ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
376 --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
379 HP-UX: When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
380 OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight,
381 this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
382 even though pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
383 using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
386 HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
387 compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
388 optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
389 (see http://bugs.python.org/814976). To work around this,
390 edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
392 To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
393 compiler, use these environment variables:
398 LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
400 and call configure as:
402 ./configure --without-gcc
404 then *unset* the environment variables again before running
405 make. (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
406 if it remains set.) You still have to edit the Makefile and
407 remove -O from the OPT line.
409 HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://bugs.python.org/546117)
410 suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
411 in the optimizer that break Python. Compiling without
412 optimization solves the problems.
414 SCO: The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
415 on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
417 1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
418 defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
419 Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
420 conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
422 2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
423 stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
426 LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
428 UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
429 problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
430 thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
431 tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
433 QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
434 configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
435 ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
436 test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
438 1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
439 ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
441 2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
442 your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
444 array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
445 crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
446 _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
447 posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop,
448 select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
449 syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop
451 3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
453 or, if you feel the need for speed:
455 make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
457 4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
459 Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
460 think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
462 5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
464 If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
465 I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
466 probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
467 little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
468 to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
470 BeOS: See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
471 Python on BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC
472 platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
475 Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
476 Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
477 my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
478 there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
479 thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
482 1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
483 work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
485 2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
486 following environment variable to the configure script:
490 2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
492 3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
493 modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
494 in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
496 posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
498 On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
499 included successfully:
501 _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
502 array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
503 errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
504 regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
505 time, timing, xreadlines
507 4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
508 will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
509 extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
510 will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
513 5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
514 problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
515 singly or in small groups.
517 SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
518 does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
519 is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
520 it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
521 smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
522 you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
523 smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
525 WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
526 SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
527 behavior, especially on numerical operations. To avoid this,
528 try building with "make OPT=".
530 OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
531 compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
532 and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
533 in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
535 Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
536 there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
537 platform as well. This should be resolved in time for a
540 MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
541 test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size. If
542 you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
543 failure can be avoided. If you're using the tcsh or csh shells,
544 use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the bash shell (the default
545 as of OSX 10.3), use "ulimit -s 2048".
547 On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
548 "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
549 interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
550 if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
552 On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
553 "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
554 before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
555 do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
556 as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
559 Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
560 to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all
561 references to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
563 You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
564 which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
565 as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
566 /Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
567 want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
568 Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
570 You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
571 which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the
572 i386 and PPC architetures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
574 See Mac/README for more information on framework and
577 Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
578 Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
579 of dynamic linking and fork(). This manifests itself in build
580 failures during the execution of setup.py.
582 There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
583 without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
584 NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
585 on XP would be appreciated).
589 (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
590 rather than dynamically (which is the default).
592 To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
593 other options you need (--prefix, etc.). Then in Modules/Setup
597 #_socket socketmodule.c \
598 # -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
599 # -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
601 and remove "local/" from the SSL variable. Finally, just run
604 (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
605 base address conflicts. Details on how to do this can be
606 found in the following mail:
608 http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
610 It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
611 incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
613 Two additional problems:
615 (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
616 bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
619 (2) The _curses module does not build. This is a known
620 Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
621 that this package is released.
623 On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
626 The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
627 Some time ago, there were reports that the following
628 regression tests failed:
634 Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
635 regression test using the following:
637 make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
639 News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
640 versions would be appreciated!
642 Windows: When executing Python scripts on the command line using file type
643 associations (i.e. starting "script.py" instead of "python script.py"),
644 redirects may not work unless you set a specific registry key. See
645 the Knowledge Base article <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321788>.
648 Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
649 -------------------------------------
651 Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
652 <http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
653 exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
654 backwards-compatible behavior. Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
655 Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
656 aren't supported through this interface. The old bsddb module has
657 been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default. Users
658 wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it. The
659 dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
660 other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
662 Building the sqlite3 module
663 ---------------------------
665 To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
666 packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
667 systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
668 often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
671 The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
672 or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
677 As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default. If you wish to
678 compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
679 --with-threads=no switch to configure. Unfortunately, on some
680 platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
681 threads to work properly. Below is a table of those options,
682 collected by Bill Janssen. We would love to automate this process
683 more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
684 configure.in file, so manual intervention is required. If you patch
685 the configure.in file and are confident that the patch works, please
686 send in the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
687 -- it is regenerated each time the configure.in file changes.)
689 Compiler switches for threads
690 .............................
692 The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
693 that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
694 incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
696 OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
697 (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) compile & link
699 SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris -mt
700 SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (nothing)
701 DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE -threads
702 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
703 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE -threads
704 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
705 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX -pthread
706 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
707 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
709 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
711 IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
715 Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
716 ...........................................
718 OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
720 SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
721 SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
722 DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
723 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
724 Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
725 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
726 Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
727 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
728 AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
730 IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
731 (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
734 Building a shared libpython
735 ---------------------------
737 Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
738 into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
739 executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
740 configure with --enable-shared.
742 If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
743 a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
744 files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
745 are needed for the shared library.
748 Configuring additional built-in modules
749 ---------------------------------------
751 Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
752 distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
753 automatically compiles them. Autodetection doesn't always work, so
754 you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
755 file; but this should be considered a last resort. The rest of this
756 section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
757 You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
758 is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
760 This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
761 if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
762 yourself (configure will never overwrite it). Never edit Setup.dist
763 -- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below). Read the comments in
764 the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed. When you
765 have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
766 automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
769 Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
770 modules can't be reliably autodetected. Often the quickest way to
771 determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
772 will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
773 errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
774 the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
776 On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
777 system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware. These
778 modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
780 In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
781 (the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
782 convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
783 installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
787 Setting the optimization/debugging options
788 ------------------------------------------
790 If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
791 the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
792 command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
793 on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
794 environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
795 (likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
796 set of libraries to link with).
798 When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
799 the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
801 Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
802 be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
804 For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
811 If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
812 with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
813 invocation. For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
816 CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
818 Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
819 libraries. The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
820 link most extension modules statically.
826 For C coverage checking using gcov, run "make coverage". This will
827 build a Python binary with profiling activated, and a ".gcno" and
828 ".gcda" file for every source file compiled with that option. With
829 the built binary, now run the code whose coverage you want to check.
830 Then, you can see coverage statistics for each individual source file
831 by running gcov, e.g.
833 gcov -o Modules zlibmodule
835 This will create a "zlibmodule.c.gcov" file in the current directory
836 containing coverage info for that source file.
838 This works only for source files statically compiled into the
839 executable; use the Makefile/Setup mechanism to compile and link
840 extension modules you want to coverage-check statically.
846 To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
847 This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
848 the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
849 produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
850 skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
851 If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
852 dump is produced, something is wrong. On some Linux systems (those
853 that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
854 non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
855 ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
857 By default, tests are prevented from overusing resources like disk space and
858 memory. To enable these tests, run "make testall".
860 IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
861 *don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
862 failing test manually, as follows:
864 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -v test_whatever
866 (substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
867 different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
873 To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
874 (see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
879 This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
880 the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
881 `prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local). All binary and other
882 platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
883 directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
884 (defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
886 If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
887 installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
888 $(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
890 All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
891 name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
892 "/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
893 <major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1"). The Python binary is
894 installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
895 created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
896 name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
899 If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
900 entitled "Installing multiple versions".
902 The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
903 Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
904 versions of Emacs may already have it.) Follow the instructions that
905 came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
907 On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
908 should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
909 installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
910 PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
913 Installing multiple versions
914 ----------------------------
916 On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
917 using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
918 script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
919 overwritten by the installation of a different version. All files and
920 directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
921 version and can thus live side-by-side. "make install" also creates
922 ${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you intend
923 to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
924 version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using
925 "make install". Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
927 For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
928 the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
929 directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
932 Configuration options and variables
933 -----------------------------------
935 Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
938 WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
939 must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
940 after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
943 --with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
944 it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
945 installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
946 --without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
947 name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
948 advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
949 remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
952 --prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
953 Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
954 you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
955 binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
956 library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
957 --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
958 installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
959 interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
960 affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
961 Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
962 prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
963 prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
964 than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
965 about the install prefix.
967 --with-readline: This option is no longer supported. GNU
968 readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
970 --with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
971 threads, and support for this is enabled by default. To
972 disable this, pass --with-threads=no. If the library required
973 for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
974 --with-thread=DIRECTORY. IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
975 changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
976 will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
977 --with-dec-threads instead.
979 --with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
980 supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
981 ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
982 This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
983 library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
984 is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
985 IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
986 shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
988 --with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
989 on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
990 Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
991 combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
992 (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
993 emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
995 ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
996 enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
997 configure, passing it the option
998 --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
999 the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
1000 DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
1001 (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
1002 linking using shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1004 --with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
1005 versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
1006 (default the empty string) using the options
1007 --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. For
1008 example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
1009 compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
1010 --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
1011 libraries, the C library last.
1013 --with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
1016 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
1017 then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
1018 function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
1019 <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
1020 It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
1021 runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
1023 There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
1024 with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
1025 E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
1026 a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
1027 --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
1028 between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
1029 build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
1032 The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
1033 determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
1034 to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
1035 line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
1036 change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
1037 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
1038 In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
1039 some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
1040 CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
1041 C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
1043 Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
1044 python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
1047 --with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
1048 memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
1049 live objects when the interpreter terminates.
1051 --with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
1052 foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
1053 any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
1054 If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
1055 in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
1056 read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1058 --with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
1060 --with-system-ffi: Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
1061 library installed on the system.
1063 --with-dbmliborder=db1:db2:...: Specify the order that backends for the
1064 dbm extension are checked. Valid value is a colon separated string
1065 with the backend names `ndbm', `gdbm' and `bdb'.
1067 Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
1068 -------------------------------------------------------------
1070 If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
1071 usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
1072 architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
1073 VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
1074 architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
1075 appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
1076 necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
1077 contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
1078 actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
1079 you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
1081 For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
1082 in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
1083 directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
1085 $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
1086 $ cd /usr/tmp/python
1087 $ ~guido/src/python/configure
1093 Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
1094 directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
1095 edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
1096 reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
1097 automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
1098 of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
1099 makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
1100 fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
1101 doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
1102 however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
1104 Also note that you can't use a workspace for VPATH and non VPATH builds. The
1105 object files left behind by one version confuses the other.
1108 Building on non-UNIX systems
1109 ----------------------------
1111 For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
1112 project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. See
1113 PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
1115 For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
1116 for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
1118 For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
1119 for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
1120 development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
1121 (http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
1122 pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
1124 Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
1125 platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
1127 To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
1128 effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
1129 has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
1130 pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
1131 configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
1132 1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
1133 otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
1134 variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
1136 For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
1137 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
1138 build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
1139 release-build performance). The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
1143 Miscellaneous issues
1144 ====================
1149 There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
1150 Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it is now
1151 maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw. The latest version, along with
1152 various other contributed Python-related Emacs goodies, is online at
1153 http://launchpad.net/python-mode/.
1159 The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
1160 usable Tcl/Tk installation. This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
1163 For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
1164 http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
1166 There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
1168 Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
1169 lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
1170 (lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
1171 Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
1172 Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
1173 module. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
1174 and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
1175 this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
1176 set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
1179 Distribution structure
1180 ----------------------
1182 Most subdirectories have their own README files. Most files have
1185 Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
1186 Doc/ Documentation sources (reStructuredText)
1187 Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
1188 Include/ Public header files
1189 LICENSE Licensing information
1190 Lib/ Python library modules
1191 Mac/ Macintosh specific resources
1192 Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
1193 Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
1194 Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
1195 Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
1196 PC/ Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
1197 PCbuild/ Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
1198 Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
1199 Python/ The byte-compiler and interpreter
1200 README The file you're reading now
1201 RISCOS/ Files specific to RISC OS port
1202 Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
1203 pyconfig.h.in Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
1204 configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
1205 configure.in Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
1206 install-sh Shell script used to install files
1207 setup.py Python script used to build extension modules
1209 The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
1210 the configuration and build processes:
1212 Makefile Build rules
1213 Makefile.pre Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
1214 buildno Keeps track of the build number
1215 config.cache Cache of configuration variables
1216 pyconfig.h Configuration header
1217 config.log Log from last configure run
1218 config.status Status from last run of the configure script
1219 getbuildinfo.o Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
1220 libpython<version>.a The library archive
1221 python The executable interpreter
1222 reflog.txt Output from running the regression suite with the -R flag
1223 tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
1230 --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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