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+\chapter{Building C and \Cpp{} Extensions with distutils
+     \label{building}}
+
+\sectionauthor{Martin v. L\"owis}{martin@v.loewis.de}
+
+Starting in Python 1.4, Python provides, on \UNIX{}, a special make
+file for building make files for building dynamically-linked
+extensions and custom interpreters.  Starting with Python 2.0, this
+mechanism (known as related to Makefile.pre.in, and Setup files) is no
+longer supported. Building custom interpreters was rarely used, and
+extensions modules can be build using distutils.
+
+Building an extension module using distutils requires that distutils
+is installed on the build machine, which is included in Python 2.x and
+available separately for Python 1.5. Since distutils also supports
+creation of binary packages, users don't necessarily need a compiler
+and distutils to install the extension.
+
+A distutils package contains a driver script, \file{setup.py}. This is
+a plain Python file, which, in the most simple case, could look like
+this:
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+from distutils.core import setup, Extension
+
+module1 = Extension('demo',
+                    sources = ['demo.c'])
+
+setup (name = 'PackageName',
+       version = '1.0',
+       description = 'This is a demo package',
+       ext_modules = [module1])
+
+\end{verbatim}
+
+With this \file{setup.py}, and a file \file{demo.c}, running
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+python setup.py build 
+\end{verbatim}
+
+will compile \file{demo.c}, and produce an extension module named
+\samp{demo} in the \file{build} directory. Depending on the system,
+the module file will end up in a subdirectory \file{build/lib.system},
+and may have a name like \file{demo.so} or \file{demo.pyd}.
+
+In the \file{setup.py}, all execution is performed by calling the
+\samp{setup} function. This takes a variable number of keyword 
+arguments, of which the example above uses only a
+subset. Specifically, the example specifies meta-information to build
+packages, and it specifies the contents of the package.  Normally, a
+package will contain of addition modules, like Python source modules,
+documentation, subpackages, etc. Please refer to the distutils
+documentation in \citetitle[../dist/dist.html]{Distributing Python
+Modules} to learn more about the features of distutils; this section
+explains building extension modules only.
+
+It is common to pre-compute arguments to \function{setup}, to better
+structure the driver script. In the example above,
+the\samp{ext_modules} argument to \function{setup} is a list of
+extension modules, each of which is an instance of the
+\class{Extension}. In the example, the instance defines an extension
+named \samp{demo} which is build by compiling a single source file,
+\file{demo.c}.
+
+In many cases, building an extension is more complex, since additional
+preprocessor defines and libraries may be needed. This is demonstrated
+in the example below.
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+from distutils.core import setup, Extension
+
+module1 = Extension('demo',
+                    define_macros = [('MAJOR_VERSION', '1'),
+                                     ('MINOR_VERSION', '0')],
+                    include_dirs = ['/usr/local/include'],
+                    libraries = ['tcl83'],
+                    library_dirs = ['/usr/local/lib'],
+                    sources = ['demo.c'])
+
+setup (name = 'PackageName',
+       version = '1.0',
+       description = 'This is a demo package',
+       author = 'Martin v. Loewis',
+       author_email = 'martin@v.loewis.de',
+       url = 'http://www.python.org/doc/current/ext/building.html',
+       long_description = '''
+This is really just a demo package.
+''',
+       ext_modules = [module1])
+
+\end{verbatim}
+
+In this example, \function{setup} is called with additional
+meta-information, which is recommended when distribution packages have
+to be built. For the extension itself, it specifies preprocessor
+defines, include directories, library directories, and libraries.
+Depending on the compiler, distutils passes this information in
+different ways to the compiler. For example, on \UNIX{}, this may
+result in the compilation commands
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+gcc -DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -DMAJOR_VERSION=1 -DMINOR_VERSION=0 -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/python2.2 -c demo.c -o build/temp.linux-i686-2.2/demo.o
+
+gcc -shared build/temp.linux-i686-2.2/demo.o -L/usr/local/lib -ltcl83 -o build/lib.linux-i686-2.2/demo.so
+\end{verbatim}
+
+These lines are for demonstration purposes only; distutils users
+should trust that distutils gets the invocations right.
+
+\section{Distributing your extension modules
+     \label{distributing}}
+
+When an extension has been successfully build, there are three ways to
+use it.
+
+End-users will typically want to install the module, they do so by
+running
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+python setup.py install
+\end{verbatim}
+
+Module maintainers should produce source packages; to do so, they run
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+python setup.py sdist
+\end{verbatim}
+
+In some cases, additional files need to be included in a source
+distribution; this is done through a \file{MANIFEST.in} file; see the
+distutils documentation for details.
+
+If the source distribution has been build successfully, maintainers
+can also create binary distributions. Depending on the platform, one
+of the following commands can be used to do so.
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+python setup.py bdist_wininst
+python setup.py bdist_rpm
+python setup.py bdist_dumb
+\end{verbatim}
+