doc/html/installation.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
   2 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
   3 <head>
   4 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
   5 <meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.8.1: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/" />
   6 <title>Installing lxml</title>
   7 <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" />
   8 </head>
   9 <body>
  10 <div class="document" id="installing-lxml">
  11 <div class="sidemenu"><ul id="lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="index.html">lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#introduction">Introduction</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#support-the-project">Support the project</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#documentation">Documentation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#download">Download</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#mailing-list">Mailing list</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#bug-tracker">Bug tracker</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#license">License</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#old-versions">Old Versions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#legal-notice-for-donations">Legal Notice for Donations</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="intro-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="intro.html">Why lxml?</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#motto">Motto</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#aims">Aims</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu current" id="installation-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="installation.html">Installing lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#requirements">Requirements</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#building-lxml-from-sources">Building lxml from sources</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#using-lxml-with-python-libxml2">Using lxml with python-libxml2</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#ms-windows">MS Windows</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#macos-x">MacOS-X</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="performance-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="performance.html">Benchmarks and Speed</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#general-notes">General notes</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#how-to-read-the-timings">How to read the timings</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#parsing-and-serialising">Parsing and Serialising</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#the-elementtree-api">The ElementTree API</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#xpath">XPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#a-longer-example">A longer example</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#lxml-objectify">lxml.objectify</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="compatibility-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="compatibility.html">ElementTree compatibility of lxml.etree</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="FAQ-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="FAQ.html">lxml FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#general-questions">General Questions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#contributing">Contributing</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#bugs">Bugs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#id1">Threading</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#parsing-and-serialisation">Parsing and Serialisation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#xpath-and-document-traversal">XPath and Document Traversal</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Developing with lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Developing with lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="tutorial-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="tutorial.html">The lxml.etree Tutorial</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-element-class">The Element class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-elementtree-class">The ElementTree class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#parsing-from-strings-and-files">Parsing from strings and files</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#namespaces">Namespaces</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-e-factory">The E-factory</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#elementpath">ElementPath</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="api index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api/index.html">API reference</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="api-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api.html">APIs specific to lxml.etree</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#other-element-apis">Other Element APIs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#trees-and-documents">Trees and Documents</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#iteration">Iteration</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#error-handling-on-exceptions">Error handling on exceptions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#error-logging">Error logging</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#serialisation">Serialisation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#cdata">CDATA</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#xinclude-and-elementinclude">XInclude and ElementInclude</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#write-c14n-on-elementtree">write_c14n on ElementTree</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="parsing-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="parsing.html">Parsing XML and HTML with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#parsers">Parsers</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#the-target-parser-interface">The target parser interface</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#the-feed-parser-interface">The feed parser interface</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#iterparse-and-iterwalk">iterparse and iterwalk</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#python-unicode-strings">Python unicode strings</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="validation-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="validation.html">Validation with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#validation-at-parse-time">Validation at parse time</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#id1">DTD</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#relaxng">RelaxNG</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#xmlschema">XMLSchema</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#id2">Schematron</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#id3">(Pre-ISO-Schematron)</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="xpathxslt-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="xpathxslt.html">XPath and XSLT with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="xpathxslt.html#xpath">XPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="xpathxslt.html#xslt">XSLT</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="objectify-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="objectify.html">lxml.objectify</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#the-lxml-objectify-api">The lxml.objectify API</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#asserting-a-schema">Asserting a Schema</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#objectpath">ObjectPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#python-data-types">Python data types</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#how-data-types-are-matched">How data types are matched</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#what-is-different-from-lxml-etree">What is different from lxml.etree?</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxmlhtml-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxmlhtml.html">lxml.html</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#parsing-html">Parsing HTML</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#html-element-methods">HTML Element Methods</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#running-html-doctests">Running HTML doctests</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#creating-html-with-the-e-factory">Creating HTML with the E-factory</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#working-with-links">Working with links</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#forms">Forms</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#cleaning-up-html">Cleaning up HTML</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#html-diff">HTML Diff</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#examples">Examples</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="cssselect-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="cssselect.html">lxml.cssselect</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#the-cssselector-class">The CSSSelector class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#css-selectors">CSS Selectors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#namespaces">Namespaces</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#limitations">Limitations</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="elementsoup-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="elementsoup.html">BeautifulSoup Parser</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#parsing-with-the-soupparser">Parsing with the soupparser</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#entity-handling">Entity handling</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#using-soupparser-as-a-fallback">Using soupparser as a fallback</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#using-only-the-encoding-detection">Using only the encoding detection</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="html5parser-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="html5parser.html">html5lib Parser</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="html5parser.html#differences-to-regular-html-parsing">Differences to regular HTML parsing</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="html5parser.html#function-reference">Function Reference</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Extending lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Extending lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="resolvers-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="resolvers.html">Document loading and URL resolving</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#xml-catalogs">XML Catalogs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#uri-resolvers">URI Resolvers</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#document-loading-in-context">Document loading in context</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#i-o-access-control-in-xslt">I/O access control in XSLT</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="extensions-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="extensions.html">Python extensions for XPath and XSLT</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="extensions.html#xpath-extension-functions">XPath Extension functions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="extensions.html#xslt-extension-elements">XSLT extension elements</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="element classes-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="element_classes.html">Using custom Element classes in lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#background-on-element-proxies">Background on Element proxies</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#element-initialization">Element initialization</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#setting-up-a-class-lookup-scheme">Setting up a class lookup scheme</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#generating-xml-with-custom-classes">Generating XML with custom classes</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#id1">Implementing namespaces</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="sax-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="sax.html">Sax support</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#building-a-tree-from-sax-events">Building a tree from SAX events</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#producing-sax-events-from-an-elementtree-or-element">Producing SAX events from an ElementTree or Element</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#interfacing-with-pulldom-minidom">Interfacing with pulldom/minidom</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="capi-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="capi.html">The public C-API of lxml.etree</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="capi.html#writing-external-modules-in-cython">Writing external modules in Cython</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="capi.html#writing-external-modules-in-c">Writing external modules in C</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Developing lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Developing lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="build-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="build.html">How to build lxml from source</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#cython">Cython</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#github-git-and-hg">Github, git and hg</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#id2">Setuptools</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#running-the-tests-and-reporting-errors">Running the tests and reporting errors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#building-an-egg">Building an egg</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#building-lxml-on-macos-x">Building lxml on MacOS-X</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#static-linking-on-windows">Static linking on Windows</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#building-debian-packages-from-svn-sources">Building Debian packages from SVN sources</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxml source howto-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html">How to read the source of lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#what-is-cython">What is Cython?</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#where-to-start">Where to start?</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#python-modules">Python modules</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-objectify">lxml.objectify</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-html">lxml.html</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="changes 2 3 5-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="changes-2.3.5.html">Release Changelog</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="credits-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="credits.html">Credits</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="credits.html#main-contributors">Main contributors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="credits.html#special-thanks-goes-to">Special thanks goes to:</a></li></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="http://lxml.de/sitemap.html">Sitemap</a></li></ul></div><h1 class="title">Installing lxml</h1>
  12
  13 <p>For special installation instructions regarding MS Windows and
  14 MacOS-X, see the specific sections below.</p>
  15 <div class="contents topic" id="contents">
  16 <p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
  17 <ul class="simple">
  18 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#requirements" id="id1">Requirements</a></li>
  19 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#installation" id="id2">Installation</a></li>
  20 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#building-lxml-from-sources" id="id3">Building lxml from sources</a></li>
  21 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#using-lxml-with-python-libxml2" id="id4">Using lxml with python-libxml2</a></li>
  22 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#ms-windows" id="id5">MS Windows</a></li>
  23 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#macos-x" id="id6">MacOS-X</a></li>
  24 </ul>
  25 </div>
  26 <div class="section" id="requirements">
  27 <h1>Requirements</h1>
  28 <p>You need Python 2.4 or later.</p>
  29 <p>Unless you are using a static binary distribution (e.g. a Windows
  30 binary egg from PyPI), you need to install libxml2 and libxslt, in
  31 particular:</p>
  32 <ul class="simple">
  33 <li>libxml 2.6.21 or later. It can be found here:
  34 <a class="reference external" href="http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html">http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html</a><ul>
  35 <li>We recommend libxml2 2.7.8 or a later version.</li>
  36 <li>If you want to use XPath, do not use libxml2 2.6.27.</li>
  37 <li>If you want to use the feed parser interface, especially when
  38 parsing from unicode strings, do not use libxml2 2.7.4 through
  39 2.7.6.</li>
  40 </ul>
  41 </li>
  42 <li>libxslt 1.1.15 or later. It can be found here:
  43 <a class="reference external" href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/downloads.html">http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/downloads.html</a><ul>
  44 <li>We recommend libxslt 1.1.26 or later.</li>
  45 </ul>
  46 </li>
  47 </ul>
  48 <p>Newer versions generally contain fewer bugs and are therefore
  49 recommended.  XML Schema support is also still worked on in libxml2,
  50 so newer versions will give you better compliance with the W3C spec.</p>
  51 </div>
  52 <div class="section" id="installation">
  53 <h1>Installation</h1>
  54 <p>Get the <a class="reference external" href="http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall">easy_install</a> tool and run the following as super-user (or
  55 administrator):</p>
  56 <pre class="literal-block">
  57 easy_install --allow-hosts=lxml.de,*.python.org lxml
  58 </pre>
  59 <ul>
  60 <li><p class="first">On <strong>MS Windows</strong>, the above will install the binary builds that we
  61 provide.  If there is no binary build of the latest release yet,
  62 please search <a class="reference external" href="http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/lxml">PyPI</a> for the last release that has them and pass that
  63 version to <tt class="docutils literal">easy_install</tt> like this:</p>
  64 <pre class="literal-block">
  65 easy_install --allow-hosts=lxml.de,*.python.org lxml==2.2.2
  66 </pre>
  67 </li>
  68 <li><p class="first">On <strong>Linux</strong> (and most other well-behaved operating systems),
  69 <tt class="docutils literal">easy_install</tt> will manage to build the source distribution as
  70 long as libxml2 and libxslt are properly installed, including
  71 development packages, i.e. header files, etc.  Use your package
  72 management tool to look for packages like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">libxml2-dev</span></tt> or
  73 <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">libxslt-devel</span></tt> if the build fails, and make sure they are
  74 installed.</p>
  75 </li>
  76 <li><p class="first">On <strong>MacOS-X</strong>, use the following to build the source distribution,
  77 and make sure you have a working Internet connection, as this will
  78 download libxml2 and libxslt in order to build them:</p>
  79 <pre class="literal-block">
  80 STATIC_DEPS=true sudo easy_install --allow-hosts=lxml.de,*.python.org lxml
  81 </pre>
  82 </li>
  83 </ul>
  84 </div>
  85 <div class="section" id="building-lxml-from-sources">
  86 <h1>Building lxml from sources</h1>
  87 <p>If you want to build lxml from the GitHub repository, you should read
  88 <a class="reference external" href="build.html">how to build lxml from source</a> (or the file <tt class="docutils literal">doc/build.txt</tt> in the
  89 source tree).  Building from developer sources or from modified
  90 distribution sources requires <a class="reference external" href="http://www.cython.org">Cython</a> to translate the lxml sources
  91 into C code.  The source distribution ships with pre-generated C
  92 source files, so you do not need Cython installed to build from
  93 release sources.</p>
  94 <p>If you have read these instructions and still cannot manage to install lxml,
  95 you can check the archives of the <a class="reference external" href="http://lxml.de/mailinglist/">mailing list</a> to see if your problem is
  96 known or otherwise send a mail to the list.</p>
  97 </div>
  98 <div class="section" id="using-lxml-with-python-libxml2">
  99 <h1>Using lxml with python-libxml2</h1>
 100 <p>If you want to use lxml together with the official libxml2 Python
 101 bindings (maybe because one of your dependencies uses it), you must
 102 build lxml statically.  Otherwise, the two packages will interfere in
 103 places where the libxml2 library requires global configuration, which
 104 can have any kind of effect from disappearing functionality to crashes
 105 in either of the two.</p>
 106 <p>To get a static build, either pass the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">--static-deps</span></tt> option to the
 107 setup.py script, or run <tt class="docutils literal">easy_install</tt> with the <tt class="docutils literal">STATIC_DEPS</tt> or
 108 <tt class="docutils literal">STATICBUILD</tt> environment variable set to true, i.e.</p>
 109 <pre class="literal-block">
 110 STATIC_DEPS=true easy_install lxml
 111 </pre>
 112 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">STATICBUILD</tt> environment variable is handled equivalently to
 113 the <tt class="docutils literal">STATIC_DEPS</tt> variable, but is used by some other extension
 114 packages, too.</p>
 115 </div>
 116 <div class="section" id="ms-windows">
 117 <h1>MS Windows</h1>
 118 <p>For MS Windows, the <a class="reference external" href="http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/lxml">binary egg distribution of lxml</a> is statically
 119 built against the libraries, i.e. it already includes them.  There is
 120 no need to install the external libraries if you use an official lxml
 121 build from PyPI.</p>
 122 <p>Unless you know what you are doing, this means: <em>do not install
 123 libxml2 or libxslt if you use a binary build of lxml</em>.  Just use
 124 <tt class="docutils literal">easy_install</tt> by following the installation instructions above.</p>
 125 <p><em>Only</em> if you want to upgrade the libraries and/or compile lxml from
 126 sources, you should install a <a class="reference external" href="http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html">binary distribution</a> of libxml2 and
 127 libxslt.  You need both libxml2 and libxslt, as well as iconv and
 128 zlib.</p>
 129 </div>
 130 <div class="section" id="macos-x">
 131 <h1>MacOS-X</h1>
 132 <p>A macport of lxml is available.  Try <tt class="docutils literal">port install <span class="pre">py25-lxml</span></tt>.</p>
 133 <p>If you want to use a more recent lxml release, you may have to build
 134 it yourself.  Apple doesn't help here, as the system libraries of
 135 libxml2 and libxslt installed under MacOS-X are horribly outdated, and
 136 updating them is everything but easy.  In any case, you cannot run
 137 lxml 2.x with the system provided libraries, so you have to use newer
 138 libraries.</p>
 139 <p>Luckily, lxml's <tt class="docutils literal">setup.py</tt> script has built-in support for building
 140 and integrating these libraries statically during the build.  Please
 141 read the <a class="reference external" href="build.html#building-lxml-on-macos-x">MacOS-X build instructions</a>.</p>
 142 <p>A number of users also reported success with updated libraries
 143 (e.g. using <a class="reference external" href="http://finkproject.org/">fink</a> or macports), but needed to set the runtime
 144 environment variable <tt class="docutils literal">DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH</tt> to the directory where fink
 145 keeps the libraries.  In any case, this method is easy to get wrong
 146 and everything but safe.  Unless you know what you are doing, follow
 147 the static build instructions above.</p>
 148 </div>
 149 </div>
 150 <div class="footer">
 151 <hr class="footer" />
 152 Generated on: 2012-07-31.
 153
 154 </div>
 155 </body>
 156 </html>