Quick Start Guide ----------------- 1. Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, any edition. 2. Install Subversion, and make sure 'svn.exe' is on your PATH. 3. Run "build.bat -e" to build Python in 32-bit Release configuration. 4. (Optional, but recommended) Run the test suite with "rt.bat -q". Building Python using Microsoft Visual C++ ------------------------------------------ This directory is used to build CPython for Microsoft Windows NT version 6.0 or higher (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or later) on 32 and 64 bit platforms. Using this directory requires an installation of Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 (MSVC 14.0) of any edition. The specific requirements are as follows: Visual Studio Express 2015 for Desktop Visual Studio Professional 2015 Either edition is sufficient for building all configurations except for Profile Guided Optimization. The Python build solution pcbuild.sln makes use of Solution Folders, which this edition does not support. Any time pcbuild.sln is opened or reloaded by Visual Studio, a warning about Solution Folders will be displayed, which can be safely dismissed with no impact on your ability to build Python. Required for building 64-bit Debug and Release configuration builds Visual Studio Premium 2015 Required for building Release configuration builds that make use of Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), on either platform. All you need to do to build is open the solution "pcbuild.sln" in Visual Studio, select the desired combination of configuration and platform, then build with "Build Solution". You can also build from the command line using the "build.bat" script in this directory; see below for details. The solution is configured to build the projects in the correct order. The solution currently supports two platforms. The Win32 platform is used to build standard x86-compatible 32-bit binaries, output into the win32 sub-directory. The x64 platform is used for building 64-bit AMD64 (aka x86_64 or EM64T) binaries, output into the amd64 sub-directory. The Itanium (IA-64) platform is no longer supported. See the "Building for AMD64" section below for more information about 64-bit builds. Four configuration options are supported by the solution: Debug Used to build Python with extra debugging capabilities, equivalent to using ./configure --with-pydebug on UNIX. All binaries built using this configuration have "_d" added to their name: python35_d.dll, python_d.exe, parser_d.pyd, and so on. Both the build and rt (run test) batch files in this directory accept a -d option for debug builds. If you are building Python to help with development of CPython, you will most likely use this configuration. PGInstrument, PGUpdate Used to build Python in Release configuration using PGO, which requires Premium Edition of Visual Studio. See the "Profile Guided Optimization" section below for more information. Build output from each of these configurations lands in its own sub-directory of this directory. The official Python releases may be built using these configurations. Release Used to build Python as it is meant to be used in production settings, though without PGO. Building Python using the build.bat script ---------------------------------------------- In this directory you can find build.bat, a script designed to make building Python on Windows simpler. This script will use the env.bat script to detect one of Visual Studio 2015, 2013, 2012, or 2010, any of which may be used to build Python, though only Visual Studio 2015 is officially supported. By default, build.bat will build Python in Release configuration for the 32-bit Win32 platform. It accepts several arguments to change this behavior: -c Set the configuration (see above) -d Shortcut for "-c Debug" -p Set the platform to build for ("Win32" or "x64") -r Rebuild instead of just building -t Set the target (Build, Rebuild, Clean or CleanAll) -e Use get_externals.bat to fetch external sources -M Don't build in parallel -v Increased output messages Up to 9 MSBuild switches can also be passed, though they must be passed after specifying any of the above switches. For example, use: build.bat -e -d /fl to do a debug build with externals fetched as needed and write detailed build logs to a file. If the MSBuild switch requires an equal sign ("="), the entire switch must be quoted: build.bat -e -d "/p:ExternalsDir=P:\cpython-externals" There may also be other situations where quotes are necessary. C Runtime --------- Visual Studio 2015 uses version 14 of the C runtime (MSVCRT14). The executables no longer use the "Side by Side" assemblies used in previous versions of the compiler. This simplifies distribution of applications. The run time libraries are available under the VC/Redist folder of your Visual Studio distribution. For more info, see the Readme in the VC/Redist folder. Sub-Projects ------------ The CPython project is split up into several smaller sub-projects which are managed by the pcbuild.sln solution file. Each sub-project is represented by a .vcxproj and a .vcxproj.filters file starting with the name of the sub-project. These sub-projects fall into a few general categories: The following sub-projects represent the bare minimum required to build a functioning CPython interpreter. If nothing else builds but these, you'll have a very limited but usable python.exe: pythoncore .dll and .lib python .exe make_buildinfo, make_versioninfo helpers to provide necessary information to the build process These sub-projects provide extra executables that are useful for running CPython in different ways: pythonw pythonw.exe, a variant of python.exe that doesn't open a Command Prompt window pylauncher py.exe, the Python Launcher for Windows, see http://docs.python.org/3/using/windows.html#launcher pywlauncher pyw.exe, a variant of py.exe that doesn't open a Command Prompt window _testembed _testembed.exe, a small program that embeds Python for testing purposes, used by test_capi.py These are miscellaneous sub-projects that don't really fit the other categories: _freeze_importlib _freeze_importlib.exe, used to regenerate Python\importlib.h after changes have been made to Lib\importlib\_bootstrap.py bdist_wininst ..\Lib\distutils\command\wininst-14.0[-amd64].exe, the base executable used by the distutils bdist_wininst command python3dll python3.dll, the PEP 384 Stable ABI dll xxlimited builds an example module that makes use of the PEP 384 Stable ABI, see Modules\xxlimited.c The following sub-projects are for individual modules of the standard library which are implemented in C; each one builds a DLL (renamed to .pyd) of the same name as the project: _ctypes _ctypes_test _decimal _elementtree _hashlib _msi _multiprocessing _overlapped _socket _testcapi _testbuffer _testimportmultiple pyexpat select unicodedata winsound The following Python-controlled sub-projects wrap external projects. Note that these external libraries are not necessary for a working interpreter, but they do implement several major features. See the "Getting External Sources" section below for additional information about getting the source for building these libraries. The sub-projects are: _bz2 Python wrapper for version 1.0.6 of the libbzip2 compression library Homepage: http://www.bzip.org/ _lzma Python wrapper for the liblzma compression library, using pre-built binaries of XZ Utils version 5.0.5 Homepage: http://tukaani.org/xz/ _ssl Python wrapper for version 1.0.1j of the OpenSSL secure sockets library, which is built by ssl.vcxproj Homepage: http://www.openssl.org/ Building OpenSSL requires nasm.exe (the Netwide Assembler), version 2.10 or newer from http://www.nasm.us/ to be somewhere on your PATH. More recent versions of OpenSSL may need a later version of NASM. If OpenSSL's self tests don't pass, you should first try to update NASM and do a full rebuild of OpenSSL. If you use the PCbuild\get_externals.bat method for getting sources, it also downloads a version of NASM which the libeay/ssleay sub-projects use. The libeay/ssleay sub-projects expect your OpenSSL sources to have already been configured and be ready to build. If you get your sources from svn.python.org as suggested in the "Getting External Sources" section below, the OpenSSL source will already be ready to go. If you want to build a different version, you will need to run PCbuild\prepare_ssl.py path\to\openssl-source-dir That script will prepare your OpenSSL sources in the same way that those available on svn.python.org have been prepared. Note that Perl must be installed and available on your PATH to configure OpenSSL. ActivePerl is recommended and is available from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/ The libeay and ssleay sub-projects will build the modules of OpenSSL required by _ssl and _hashlib and may need to be manually updated when upgrading to a newer version of OpenSSL or when adding new functionality to _ssl or _hashlib. They will not clean up their output with the normal Clean target; CleanAll should be used instead. _sqlite3 Wraps SQLite 3.8.3.1, which is itself built by sqlite3.vcxproj Homepage: http://www.sqlite.org/ _tkinter Wraps version 8.6.1 of the Tk windowing system. Homepage: http://www.tcl.tk/ Tkinter's dependencies are built by the tcl.vcxproj and tk.vcxproj projects. The tix.vcxproj project also builds the Tix extended widget set for use with Tkinter. Those three projects install their respective components in a directory alongside the source directories called "tcltk" on Win32 and "tcltk64" on x64. They also copy the Tcl and Tk DLLs into the current output directory, which should ensure that Tkinter is able to load Tcl/Tk without having to change your PATH. The tcl, tk, and tix sub-projects do not clean their builds with the normal Clean target; if you need to rebuild, you should use the CleanAll target or manually delete their builds. Getting External Sources ------------------------ The last category of sub-projects listed above wrap external projects Python doesn't control, and as such a little more work is required in order to download the relevant source files for each project before they can be built. However, a simple script is provided to make this as painless as possible, called "get_externals.bat" and located in this directory. This script extracts all the external sub-projects from http://svn.python.org/projects/external via Subversion (so you'll need svn.exe on your PATH) and places them in ..\externals (relative to this directory). It is also possible to download sources from each project's homepage, though you may have to change folder names or pass the names to MSBuild as the values of certain properties in order for the build solution to find them. This is an advanced topic and not necessarily fully supported. Building for AMD64 ------------------ The build process for AMD64 / x64 is very similar to standard builds, you just have to set x64 as platform. In addition, the HOST_PYTHON environment variable must point to a Python interpreter (at least 2.4), to support cross-compilation from Win32. Profile Guided Optimization --------------------------- The solution has two configurations for PGO. The PGInstrument configuration must be built first. The PGInstrument binaries are linked against a profiling library and contain extra debug information. The PGUpdate configuration takes the profiling data and generates optimized binaries. The build_pgo.bat script automates the creation of optimized binaries. It creates the PGI files, runs the unit test suite or PyBench with the PGI python, and finally creates the optimized files. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7k32f4k(VS.100).aspx for more on this topic. Static library -------------- The solution has no configuration for static libraries. However it is easy to build a static library instead of a DLL. You simply have to set the "Configuration Type" to "Static Library (.lib)" and alter the preprocessor macro "Py_ENABLE_SHARED" to "Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED". You may also have to change the "Runtime Library" from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to "Multi-threaded (/MT)". Visual Studio properties ------------------------ The PCbuild solution makes use of Visual Studio property files (*.props) to simplify each project. The properties can be viewed in the Property Manager (View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager) but should be carefully modified by hand. The property files used are: * python (versions, directories and build names) * pyproject (base settings for all projects) * openssl (used by libeay and ssleay projects) * tcltk (used by _tkinter, tcl, tk and tix projects) The pyproject property file defines all of the build settings for each project, with some projects overriding certain specific values. The GUI doesn't always reflect the correct settings and may confuse the user with false information, especially for settings that automatically adapt for diffirent configurations. Your Own Extension DLLs ----------------------- If you want to create your own extension module DLL (.pyd), there's an example with easy-to-follow instructions in ..\PC\example\; read the file readme.txt there first.