1 This is Python version 2.7.10
2 =============================
4 Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011,
5 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 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.
92 If you would like to contribute to the development of Python, relevant
93 documentation is available at:
95 http://docs.python.org/devguide/
97 For information about building Python's documentation, refer to Doc/README.txt.
103 New Python releases and related technologies are published at
104 http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
107 Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
108 ----------------------------
110 Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
111 Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
112 for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
113 mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for an
114 overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
116 Archives are accessible via the Google Groups Usenet archive; see
117 http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
118 http://www.python.org/community/lists/ for details.
124 To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
125 Tracker at http://bugs.python.org/.
128 Patches and contributions
129 -------------------------
131 To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
132 Manager at http://bugs.python.org/. Guidelines
133 for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/.
135 If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
136 comp.lang.python or python-ideas mailing lists for inital feedback. A Python
137 Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground. All
138 current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
139 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/.
145 For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
146 best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
147 above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
148 mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
149 who answer questions as they can). The newsgroup is the most
150 efficient way to ask public questions.
156 Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
157 Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
158 for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
159 type a few commands and sit back. There are some platforms where
160 things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
161 If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
162 tree, see the section on VPATH below.
164 Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
165 system configuration and creates the Makefile. (It takes a minute or
166 two -- please be patient!) You may want to pass options to the
167 configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
168 variables. When it's done, you are ready to run make.
170 To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
171 If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
172 rebuilt. In this case, you may have to run make again to correctly
173 build your desired target. The interpreter executable is built in the
176 Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
177 testing and installation. If you run into trouble, see the next
180 Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
181 involved editing the file Modules/Setup. While this file still exists
182 and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
183 more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
184 guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
185 interpreter has been built.
191 See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
193 If you run into other trouble, see the FAQ
194 (http://www.python.org/doc/faq/) for hints on what can go wrong, and
197 If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
198 object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
199 not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
200 problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
202 If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
203 should be there, inspect the config.log file.
205 If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
206 longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
207 whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
208 accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
209 is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
210 which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
211 warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
214 If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
215 are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
216 optimization. This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
217 some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
218 by turning off optimization. Consider switching to stable versions
219 (gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
221 From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C. Compiling using
222 old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible. ANSI C compilers are
223 available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
224 compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
226 If "make install" fails mysteriously during the "compiling the library"
227 step, make sure that you don't have any of the PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME
228 environment variables set, as they may interfere with the newly built
229 executable which is compiling the library.
234 A number of systems are not supported in Python 2.7 anymore. Some
235 support code is still present, but will be removed in later versions.
236 If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
237 please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
238 volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion
239 regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
240 as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
242 More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
249 - Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
251 - Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.ac)
252 - Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
253 or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
254 - Systems using --with-dl-dld
255 - Systems using --without-universal-newlines
257 - Systems using --with-wctype-functions
261 Platform specific notes
262 -----------------------
264 (Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
265 on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
266 submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
267 above) so we can remove them!)
269 Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
270 1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
271 module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
272 default. In Modules/Setup a line like
274 bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
276 should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
277 compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
279 XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
281 64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, and imageop don't work.
282 The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
283 Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
284 contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
287 Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
288 2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
289 way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
290 the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
293 When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
294 versions built using it. This mistakenly enables the
295 -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
296 Solaris. binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
297 are aware of the problem. Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
298 fixed things. It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
299 completely. This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
300 and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
303 When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
306 ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
307 No such file or directory
309 you need to first make sure that the library is available on
310 your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
311 to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
313 1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
314 containing missing libraries.
315 2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
316 3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
317 4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
320 The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
321 least up to 3.4.3). To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
324 make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
325 ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
327 Linux: A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
328 the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
329 solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
330 problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
332 Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
333 Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
334 need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
336 There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
337 1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
338 require this version. Python 2.1.x may be installed as
339 /usr/bin/python2. The Makefile installs Python as
340 /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
341 over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
343 FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
344 similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
345 the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
346 the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
347 cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
348 called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
349 required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
350 automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
352 BSDI: BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
353 which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
354 instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
355 Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
356 BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
358 DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
359 --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
360 default). When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
361 compiler error if optimization is used. This was reported for
362 GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile the affected
363 file without optimization to solve the problem.
365 DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
366 and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
368 AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
369 place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
370 (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
371 has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
372 errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
373 testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
374 like "cc_r". For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
375 CC="xlC" without thread support).
377 AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
380 export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
381 ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
382 --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
385 HP-UX: When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
386 OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight,
387 this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
388 even though pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
389 using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
392 HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
393 compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
394 optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
395 (see http://bugs.python.org/814976). To work around this,
396 edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
398 To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
399 compiler, use these environment variables:
404 LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
406 and call configure as:
408 ./configure --without-gcc
410 then *unset* the environment variables again before running
411 make. (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
412 if it remains set.) You still have to edit the Makefile and
413 remove -O from the OPT line.
415 HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://bugs.python.org/546117)
416 suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
417 in the optimizer that break Python. Compiling without
418 optimization solves the problems.
420 SCO: The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
421 on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
423 1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
424 defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
425 Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
426 conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
428 2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
429 stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
432 LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
434 UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
435 problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
436 thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
437 tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
439 QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
440 configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
441 ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
442 test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
444 1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
445 ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
447 2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
448 your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
450 array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
451 crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
452 _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
453 posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop,
454 select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
455 syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop
457 3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
459 or, if you feel the need for speed:
461 make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
463 4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
465 Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
466 think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
468 5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
470 If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
471 I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
472 probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
473 little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
474 to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
476 BeOS: See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
477 Python on BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC
478 platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
481 Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
482 Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
483 my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
484 there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
485 thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
488 1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
489 work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
491 2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
492 following environment variable to the configure script:
496 2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
498 3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
499 modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
500 in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
502 posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
504 On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
505 included successfully:
507 _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
508 array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
509 errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
510 regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
511 time, timing, xreadlines
513 4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
514 will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
515 extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
516 will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
519 5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
520 problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
521 singly or in small groups.
523 SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
524 does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
525 is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
526 it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
527 smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
528 you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
529 smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
531 WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
532 SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
533 behavior, especially on numerical operations. To avoid this,
534 try building with "make OPT=".
536 OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
537 compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
538 and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
539 in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
541 Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
542 there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
543 platform as well. This should be resolved in time for a
546 MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
547 test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size. If
548 you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
549 failure can be avoided. If you're using the tcsh or csh shells,
550 use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the bash shell (the default
551 as of OSX 10.3), use "ulimit -s 2048".
553 On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
554 "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
555 interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
556 if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
558 On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
559 "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
560 before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
561 do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
562 as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
565 Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
566 to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all
567 references to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
569 You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
570 which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
571 as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
572 /Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
573 want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
574 Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
576 You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
577 which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the
578 i386 and PPC architetures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
580 See Mac/README for more information on framework and
583 Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
584 Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
585 of dynamic linking and fork(). This manifests itself in build
586 failures during the execution of setup.py.
588 There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
589 without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
590 NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
591 on XP would be appreciated).
595 (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
596 rather than dynamically (which is the default).
598 To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
599 other options you need (--prefix, etc.). Then in Modules/Setup
603 #_socket socketmodule.c \
604 # -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
605 # -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
607 and remove "local/" from the SSL variable. Finally, just run
610 (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
611 base address conflicts. Details on how to do this can be
612 found in the following mail:
614 http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
616 It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
617 incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
619 Two additional problems:
621 (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
622 bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
625 (2) The _curses module does not build. This is a known
626 Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
627 that this package is released.
629 On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
632 The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
633 Some time ago, there were reports that the following
634 regression tests failed:
640 Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
641 regression test using the following:
643 make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
645 News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
646 versions would be appreciated!
648 Windows: When executing Python scripts on the command line using file type
649 associations (i.e. starting "script.py" instead of "python script.py"),
650 redirects may not work unless you set a specific registry key. See
651 the Knowledge Base article <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321788>.
654 Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
655 -------------------------------------
657 Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
658 <http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
659 exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
660 backwards-compatible behavior. Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
661 Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
662 aren't supported through this interface. The old bsddb module has
663 been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default. Users
664 wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it. The
665 dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
666 other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
668 Building the sqlite3 module
669 ---------------------------
671 To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
672 packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
673 systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
674 often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
677 The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
678 or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
683 As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default. If you wish to
684 compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
685 --with-threads=no switch to configure. Unfortunately, on some
686 platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
687 threads to work properly. Below is a table of those options,
688 collected by Bill Janssen. We would love to automate this process
689 more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
690 configure.ac file, so manual intervention is required. If you patch
691 the configure.ac file and are confident that the patch works, please
692 send in the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
693 -- it is regenerated each time the configure.ac file changes.)
695 Compiler switches for threads
696 .............................
698 The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
699 that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
700 incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
702 OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
703 (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) compile & link
705 SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris -mt
706 SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (nothing)
707 DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE -threads
708 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
709 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE -threads
710 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
711 Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX -pthread
712 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
713 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
715 AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
717 IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
721 Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
722 ...........................................
724 OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
726 SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
727 SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
728 DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
729 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
730 Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
731 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
732 Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
733 (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
734 AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
736 IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
737 (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
740 Building a shared libpython
741 ---------------------------
743 Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
744 into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
745 executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
746 configure with --enable-shared.
748 If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
749 a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
750 files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
751 are needed for the shared library.
754 Configuring additional built-in modules
755 ---------------------------------------
757 Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
758 distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
759 automatically compiles them. Autodetection doesn't always work, so
760 you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
761 file; but this should be considered a last resort. The rest of this
762 section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
763 You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
764 is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
766 This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
767 if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
768 yourself (configure will never overwrite it). Never edit Setup.dist
769 -- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below). Read the comments in
770 the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed. When you
771 have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
772 automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
775 Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
776 modules can't be reliably autodetected. Often the quickest way to
777 determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
778 will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
779 errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
780 the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
782 On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
783 system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware. These
784 modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
786 In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
787 (the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
788 convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
789 installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
793 Setting the optimization/debugging options
794 ------------------------------------------
796 If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
797 the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
798 command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
799 on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
800 environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
801 (likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
802 set of libraries to link with).
804 When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
805 the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
807 Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
808 be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
810 For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
817 If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
818 with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
819 invocation. For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
822 CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
824 Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
825 libraries. The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
826 link most extension modules statically.
832 For C coverage checking using gcov, run "make coverage". This will
833 build a Python binary with profiling activated, and a ".gcno" and
834 ".gcda" file for every source file compiled with that option. With
835 the built binary, now run the code whose coverage you want to check.
836 Then, you can see coverage statistics for each individual source file
837 by running gcov, e.g.
839 gcov -o Modules zlibmodule
841 This will create a "zlibmodule.c.gcov" file in the current directory
842 containing coverage info for that source file.
844 This works only for source files statically compiled into the
845 executable; use the Makefile/Setup mechanism to compile and link
846 extension modules you want to coverage-check statically.
852 To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
853 This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
854 the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
855 produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
856 skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
857 If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
858 dump is produced, something is wrong. On some Linux systems (those
859 that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
860 non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
861 ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
863 By default, tests are prevented from overusing resources like disk space and
864 memory. To enable these tests, run "make testall".
866 IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
867 *don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
868 failing test manually, as follows:
870 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -v test_whatever
872 (substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
873 different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
879 To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
880 (see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
885 This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
886 the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
887 `prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local). All binary and other
888 platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
889 directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
890 (defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
892 If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
893 installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
894 $(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
896 All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
897 name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
898 "/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
899 <major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1"). The Python binary is
900 installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
901 created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
902 name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
905 If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
906 entitled "Installing multiple versions".
908 The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
909 Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
910 versions of Emacs may already have it.) Follow the instructions that
911 came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
913 On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
914 should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
915 installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
916 PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
919 Installing multiple versions
920 ----------------------------
922 On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
923 using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
924 script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
925 overwritten by the installation of a different version. All files and
926 directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
927 version and can thus live side-by-side. "make install" also creates
928 ${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you intend
929 to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
930 version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using
931 "make install". Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
933 For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
934 the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
935 directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
938 Configuration options and variables
939 -----------------------------------
941 Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
944 WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
945 must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
946 after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
949 --with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
950 it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
951 installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
952 --without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
953 name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
954 advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
955 remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
958 --prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
959 Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
960 you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
961 binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
962 library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
963 --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
964 installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
965 interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
966 affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
967 Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
968 prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
969 prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
970 than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
971 about the install prefix.
973 --with-readline: This option is no longer supported. GNU
974 readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
976 --with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
977 threads, and support for this is enabled by default. To
978 disable this, pass --with-threads=no. If the library required
979 for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
980 --with-thread=DIRECTORY. IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
981 changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
982 will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
983 --with-dec-threads instead.
985 --with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
986 supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
987 ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
988 This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
989 library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
990 is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
991 IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
992 shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
994 --with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
995 on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
996 Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
997 combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
998 (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
999 emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
1001 ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
1002 enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
1003 configure, passing it the option
1004 --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
1005 the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
1006 DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
1007 (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
1008 linking using shared libraries.) THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1010 --with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
1011 versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
1012 (default the empty string) using the options
1013 --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. For
1014 example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
1015 compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
1016 --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
1017 libraries, the C library last.
1019 --with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
1022 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
1023 then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
1024 function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
1025 <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
1026 It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
1027 runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
1029 There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
1030 with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
1031 E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
1032 a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
1033 --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
1034 between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
1035 build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
1038 The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
1039 determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
1040 to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
1041 line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
1042 change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
1043 --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
1044 In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
1045 some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
1046 CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
1047 C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
1049 Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
1050 python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
1053 --with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
1054 memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
1055 live objects when the interpreter terminates.
1057 --with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
1058 foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
1059 any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
1060 If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
1061 in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
1062 read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
1064 --with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
1066 --with-system-ffi: Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
1067 library installed on the system.
1069 --with-dbmliborder=db1:db2:...: Specify the order that backends for the
1070 dbm extension are checked. Valid value is a colon separated string
1071 with the backend names `ndbm', `gdbm' and `bdb'.
1073 Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
1074 -------------------------------------------------------------
1076 If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
1077 usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
1078 architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
1079 VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
1080 architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
1081 appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
1082 necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
1083 contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
1084 actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
1085 you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
1087 For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
1088 in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
1089 directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
1091 $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
1092 $ cd /usr/tmp/python
1093 $ ~guido/src/python/configure
1099 Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
1100 directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
1101 edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
1102 reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
1103 automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
1104 of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
1105 makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
1106 fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
1107 doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
1108 however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
1110 Also note that you can't use a workspace for VPATH and non VPATH builds. The
1111 object files left behind by one version confuses the other.
1114 Building on non-UNIX systems
1115 ----------------------------
1117 For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
1118 project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. See
1119 PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
1121 For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
1122 for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
1124 For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
1125 for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
1126 development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
1127 (http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
1128 pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
1130 Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
1131 platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
1133 To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
1134 effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
1135 has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
1136 pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
1137 configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
1138 1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
1139 otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
1140 variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
1142 For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
1143 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
1144 build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
1145 release-build performance). The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
1149 Miscellaneous issues
1150 ====================
1155 There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
1156 Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it is now
1157 maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw. The latest version, along with
1158 various other contributed Python-related Emacs goodies, is online at
1159 http://launchpad.net/python-mode/.
1165 The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
1166 usable Tcl/Tk installation. This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
1169 For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
1170 http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
1172 There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
1174 Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
1175 lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
1176 (lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
1177 Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
1178 Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
1179 module. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
1180 and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
1181 this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
1182 set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
1185 Distribution structure
1186 ----------------------
1188 Most subdirectories have their own README files. Most files have
1191 Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
1192 Doc/ Documentation sources (reStructuredText)
1193 Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
1194 Include/ Public header files
1195 LICENSE Licensing information
1196 Lib/ Python library modules
1197 Mac/ Macintosh specific resources
1198 Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
1199 Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
1200 Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
1201 Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
1202 PC/ Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
1203 PCbuild/ Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
1204 Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
1205 Python/ The byte-compiler and interpreter
1206 README The file you're reading now
1207 RISCOS/ Files specific to RISC OS port
1208 Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
1209 pyconfig.h.in Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
1210 configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
1211 configure.ac Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
1212 install-sh Shell script used to install files
1213 setup.py Python script used to build extension modules
1215 The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
1216 the configuration and build processes:
1218 Makefile Build rules
1219 Makefile.pre Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
1220 buildno Keeps track of the build number
1221 config.cache Cache of configuration variables
1222 pyconfig.h Configuration header
1223 config.log Log from last configure run
1224 config.status Status from last run of the configure script
1225 getbuildinfo.o Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
1226 libpython<version>.a The library archive
1227 python The executable interpreter
1228 reflog.txt Output from running the regression suite with the -R flag
1229 tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
1236 --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
projects / mirror_edk2.git / blob