1 Building Python using VC++ 9.0
2 ------------------------------
3
4 This directory is used to build Python for Win32 and x64 platforms, e.g.
5 Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows Server 2008. In order to build 32-bit
6 debug and release executables, Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition is
7 required at the very least. In order to build 64-bit debug and release
8 executables, Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition is required at the very
9 least. In order to build all of the above, as well as generate release builds
10 that make use of Profile Guided Optimisation (PG0), Visual Studio 2008
11 Professional Edition is required at the very least. The official Python
12 releases are built with this version of Visual Studio.
13
14 For other Windows platforms and compilers, see PC/readme.txt.
15
16 All you need to do is open the workspace "pcbuild.sln" in Visual Studio,
17 select the desired combination of configuration and platform and eventually
18 build the solution. Unless you are going to debug a problem in the core or
19 you are going to create an optimized build you want to select "Release" as
20 configuration.
21
22 The PCbuild directory is compatible with all versions of Visual Studio from
23 VS C++ Express Edition over the standard edition up to the professional
24 edition. However the express edition does not support features like solution
25 folders or profile guided optimization (PGO). The missing bits and pieces
26 won't stop you from building Python.
27
28 The solution is configured to build the projects in the correct order. "Build
29 Solution" or F7 takes care of dependencies except for x64 builds. To make
30 cross compiling x64 builds on a 32bit OS possible the x64 builds require a
31 32bit version of Python.
32
33 NOTE:
34 You probably don't want to build most of the other subprojects, unless
35 you're building an entire Python distribution from scratch, or
36 specifically making changes to the subsystems they implement, or are
37 running a Python core buildbot test slave; see SUBPROJECTS below)
38
39 When using the Debug setting, the output files have a _d added to
40 their name: python27_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on. Both
41 the build and rt batch files accept a -d option for debug builds.
42
43 The 32bit builds end up in the solution folder PCbuild while the x64 builds
44 land in the amd64 subfolder. The PGI and PGO builds for profile guided
45 optimization end up in their own folders, too.
46
47 Legacy support
48 --------------
49
50 You can find build directories for older versions of Visual Studio and
51 Visual C++ in the PC directory. The legacy build directories are no longer
52 actively maintained and may not work out of the box.
53
54 PC/VC6/
55 Visual C++ 6.0
56 PC/VS7.1/
57 Visual Studio 2003 (7.1)
58 PC/VS8.0/
59 Visual Studio 2005 (8.0)
60
61
62 C RUNTIME
63 ---------
64
65 Visual Studio 2008 uses version 9 of the C runtime (MSVCRT9). The executables
66 are linked to a CRT "side by side" assembly which must be present on the target
67 machine. This is available under the VC/Redist folder of your visual studio
68 distribution. On XP and later operating systems that support
69 side-by-side assemblies it is not enough to have the msvcrt90.dll present,
70 it has to be there as a whole assembly, that is, a folder with the .dll
71 and a .manifest. Also, a check is made for the correct version.
72 Therefore, one should distribute this assembly with the dlls, and keep
73 it in the same directory. For compatibility with older systems, one should
74 also set the PATH to this directory so that the dll can be found.
75 For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder.
76
77 SUBPROJECTS
78 -----------
79 These subprojects should build out of the box. Subprojects other than the
80 main ones (pythoncore, python, pythonw) generally build a DLL (renamed to
81 .pyd) from a specific module so that users don't have to load the code
82 supporting that module unless they import the module.
83
84 pythoncore
85 .dll and .lib
86 python
87 .exe
88 pythonw
89 pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't pop up a DOS box
90 _socket
91 socketmodule.c
92 _testcapi
93 tests of the Python C API, run via Lib/test/test_capi.py, and
94 implemented by module Modules/_testcapimodule.c
95 pyexpat
96 Python wrapper for accelerated XML parsing, which incorporates stable
97 code from the Expat project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/
98 select
99 selectmodule.c
100 unicodedata
101 large tables of Unicode data
102 winsound
103 play sounds (typically .wav files) under Windows
104
105 Python-controlled subprojects that wrap external projects:
106 _bsddb
107 Wraps Berkeley DB 4.7.25, which is currently built by _bsddb.vcproj.
108 project.
109 _sqlite3
110 Wraps SQLite 3.8.11.0, which is currently built by sqlite3.vcproj.
111 _tkinter
112 Wraps the Tk windowing system. Unlike _bsddb and _sqlite3, there's no
113 corresponding tcltk.vcproj-type project that builds Tcl/Tk from vcproj's
114 within our pcbuild.sln, which means this module expects to find a
115 pre-built Tcl/Tk in either ..\externals\tcltk for 32-bit or
116 ..\externals\tcltk64 for 64-bit (relative to this directory). See below
117 for instructions to build Tcl/Tk.
118 bz2
119 Python wrapper for the libbz2 compression library. Homepage
120 http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/
121 Download the source from the python.org copy into the dist
122 directory:
123
124 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.6
125
126 ** NOTE: if you use the PCbuild\get_externals.bat approach for
127 obtaining external sources then you don't need to manually get the source
128 above via subversion. **
129
130 _ssl
131 Python wrapper for the secure sockets library.
132
133 Get the source code through
134
135 svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-1.0.2j
136
137 ** NOTE: if you use the PCbuild\get_externals.bat approach for
138 obtaining external sources then you don't need to manually get the source
139 above via subversion. **
140
141 The NASM assembler is required to build OpenSSL. If you use the
142 PCbuild\get_externals.bat script to get external library sources, it also
143 downloads a version of NASM, which the ssl build script will add to PATH.
144 Otherwise, you can download the NASM installer from
145 http://www.nasm.us/
146 and add NASM to your PATH.
147
148 You will also need ActivePerl from
149 http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/
150 in order to create the necessary makefiles and .asm files for building
151 OpenSSL.
152
153 The build process makes sure that no patented algorithms are included.
154 For now RC5, MDC2 and IDEA are excluded from the build. You may have
155 to manually remove $(OBJ_D)\i_*.obj from ms\nt.mak if the build process
156 complains about missing files or forbidden IDEA. Again the files provided
157 in the subversion repository are already fixed.
158
159 The MSVC project simply invokes PCBuild/build_ssl.py to perform
160 the build. This Python script locates and builds your OpenSSL
161 installation, then invokes a simple makefile to build the final .pyd.
162
163 build_ssl.py attempts to catch the most common errors (such as not
164 being able to find OpenSSL sources, or not being able to find a Perl
165 that works with OpenSSL) and give a reasonable error message.
166 If you have a problem that doesn't seem to be handled correctly
167 (eg, you know you have ActivePerl but we can't find it), please take
168 a peek at build_ssl.py and suggest patches. Note that build_ssl.py
169 should be able to be run directly from the command-line.
170
171 build_ssl.py/MSVC isn't clever enough to clean OpenSSL - you must do
172 this by hand.
173
174 The subprojects above wrap external projects Python doesn't control, and as
175 such, a little more work is required in order to download the relevant source
176 files for each project before they can be built. The easiest way to do this
177 is to use the `build.bat` script in this directory to build Python, and pass
178 the '-e' switch to tell it to use get_externals.bat to fetch external sources
179 and build Tcl/Tk and Tix. To use get_externals.bat, you'll need to have
180 Subversion installed and svn.exe on your PATH. The script will fetch external
181 library sources from http://svn.python.org/external and place them in
182 ..\externals (relative to this directory).
183
184 Building for Itanium
185 --------------------
186
187 Official support for Itanium builds have been dropped from the build. Please
188 contact us and provide patches if you are interested in Itanium builds.
189
190 Building for AMD64
191 ------------------
192
193 The build process for AMD64 / x64 is very similar to standard builds. You just
194 have to set x64 as platform. In addition, the HOST_PYTHON environment variable
195 must point to a Python interpreter (at least 2.4), to support cross-compilation.
196
197 Building Python Using the free MS Toolkit Compiler
198 --------------------------------------------------
199
200 Microsoft has withdrawn the free MS Toolkit Compiler, so this can no longer
201 be considered a supported option. Instead you can use the free VS C++ Express
202 Edition.
203
204 Profile Guided Optimization
205 ---------------------------
206
207 The solution has two configurations for PGO. The PGInstrument
208 configuration must be build first. The PGInstrument binaries are
209 linked against a profiling library and contain extra debug
210 information. The PGUpdate configuration takes the profiling data and
211 generates optimized binaries.
212
213 The build_pgo.bat script automates the creation of optimized binaries. It
214 creates the PGI files, runs the unit test suite or PyBench with the PGI
215 python and finally creates the optimized files.
216
217 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7k32f4k(VS.90).aspx
218
219 Static library
220 --------------
221
222 The solution has no configuration for static libraries. However it is easy
223 it build a static library instead of a DLL. You simply have to set the
224 "Configuration Type" to "Static Library (.lib)" and alter the preprocessor
225 macro "Py_ENABLE_SHARED" to "Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED". You may also have to
226 change the "Runtime Library" from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to
227 "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
228
229 Visual Studio properties
230 ------------------------
231
232 The PCbuild solution makes heavy use of Visual Studio property files
233 (*.vsprops). The properties can be viewed and altered in the Property
234 Manager (View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager).
235
236 * debug (debug macro: _DEBUG)
237 * pginstrument (PGO)
238 * pgupdate (PGO)
239 +-- pginstrument
240 * pyd (python extension, release build)
241 +-- release
242 +-- pyproject
243 * pyd_d (python extension, debug build)
244 +-- debug
245 +-- pyproject
246 * pyproject (base settings for all projects, user macros like PyDllName)
247 * release (release macro: NDEBUG)
248 * x64 (AMD64 / x64 platform specific settings)
249
250 The pyproject propertyfile defines _WIN32 and x64 defines _WIN64 and _M_X64
251 although the macros are set by the compiler, too. The GUI doesn't always know
252 about the macros and confuse the user with false information.
253