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This is Python version 2.0
==========================
There are various beta versions -- these are distinguishable through
Include/patchlevel.h or by the name of the top-level directory and the
tar file.
What's new in this release?
---------------------------
See http://www.pythonlabs.com/.
Why is it called version 2.0?
-----------------------------
While Pythoneers have grown fond of Python's exceedingly slow version
incrementing, that same quality makes parts of the rest of the world
think that Python is barely out of its first alpha test. Especially
enterprise customers are often fearful of anything that's version 1.x!
The new version number also clearly marks departure of Python's core
development team from CNRI to join BeOpen.com.
What happened to Python 1.6? It was promoted and renamed Python 2.0.
There were two alpha releases of Python 1.6 before we decided to
increment the major version number.
Previously, the version number 2.0 was associated with a mythical and
elusive incompatible future release. That release (still ways off,
and not as incompatible as people fear!) is now referred to as Python
3000.
If you don't read instructions
------------------------------
Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
current directory and when it finishes, type "make". The section
Build Instructions below is still recommended reading. :-)
What is Python anyway?
----------------------
Python is an interpreted object-oriented programming language, and is
often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java or Scheme. To find out more, point
your browser to http://www.python.org/.
A modest plug
-------------
************************************************************************
* Without your support, I won't be able to continue to work on Python! *
************************************************************************
If you use Python, please consider joining the Python Software
Activity (PSA). See http://www.python.org/psa/.
Organizations that make heavy use of Python are especially encouraged
to become corporate members -- or better still, to join the Python
Consortium (see http://www.python.org/consortium/).
How do I learn Python?
----------------------
The official tutorial is still a good place to start; see
http://www.python.org/doc/ for online and downloadable versions, as
well as a list of other introductions, and reference documentation.
There's a quickly growing set of books on Python. See
http://www.python.org/psa/bookstore/ for a list.
Copyright issues
----------------
Python is COPYRIGHTED but free to use for all. See the full copyright
notice at the end of this file and in the file Misc/COPYRIGHT.
The Python distribution is *not* affected by the GNU Public Licence
(GPL). There are interfaces to some GNU code but these are entirely
optional and no GNU code is distributed with Python.
Build instructions
==================
Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been streamlined
for most Unix installations, so all you have to do is type a few
commands, optionally edit one file, and sit back. There are some
platforms where things are not quite as smooth; see the platform
specific notes below. If you want to build for multiple platforms
sharing the same source tree, see the section on VPATH below.
You start by running the script "./configure", which figures out your
system configuration and creates several Makefiles. (It takes a
minute or two -- please be patient!) When it's done, you are ready to
run make. You may want to pass options to the configure script -- see
the section below on configuration options and variables.
To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
This will recursively run make in each of the subdirectories Parser,
Objects, Python and Modules, creating a library file in each one. The
executable of the interpreter is built in the Modules subdirectory and
moved up here when it is built. If you want or need to, you can also
chdir into each subdirectory in turn and run make there manually (do
the Modules subdirectory last!).
Once you have built an interpreter, see the subsections below on
testing, configuring additional modules, and installation. If you run
in trouble, see the next section.
Troubleshooting
---------------
See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
If recursive makes fail, try invoking make as "make MAKE=make".
If you run into other trouble, see section 3 of the FAQ
(http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw.py or
http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html) for hints on what can go wrong,
and how to fix it.
If you rerun the configure script with different options, remove all
object files by running "make clean" before rebuilding. Believe it or
not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
problems as well. Try it before sending in a bug report!
If the configure script fails or doesn't seem to find things that
should be there, inspect the config.log file. When you fix a
configure problem, be sure to remove config.cache!
If you get a warning for every file about the -Olimit option being no
longer supported, you can ignore it. There's no foolproof way to know
whether this option is needed; all I can do is test whether it is
accepted without error. On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000). If the
warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
the OPT variable.
Platform specific notes
-----------------------
(Some of these may no longer apply. If you find you can build Python
on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here, let
me know so I can remove them!)
64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, imageop and rgbimg don't work.
Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file. They
contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive. (If you have a
fix, let me know!)
Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
script).
Linux: On Linux version 1.x, once you've built Python, use it to run
the regen script in the Lib/linux1 directory. Apparently
the files as distributed don't match the system headers on
some Linux versions. (The "h2py" command refers to
Tools/scripts/h2py.py.) The modules distributed for Linux 2.x
should be okay. Shared library support now works by default
on ELF-based x86 Linux systems. (Note: when you change the
status of a module from static to shared, you must remove its
.o file or do a "make clean".)
Under RedHat Linux 5.0, if upgraded from a previous version,
remove the LinuxThreads packages. This is needed because
LinuxThreads conflicts with the new thread support provided by
glibc. Before running Python's configure script, use the
following commands as root (version numbers may differ; these
are from a stock 4.2 install):
% rpm -qa | grep ^linuxthread
linuxthreads-0.5-1
linuxthreads-devel-0.5-1
% rpm -e linuxthreads linuxthreads-devel
While Python only needs this to be done to allow thread
support to be included, the conflicts these packages create
with the new glibc may cause other packages which use threads
to fail as well, so their removal is a good idea regardless of
how you configure python.
More recently, a problem with threads and fork() was tracked
down to a bug in the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5;
glibc version 2.0.7 solves the problem. This causes the
popen2 test to fail; problem and solution reported by Pablo
Bleyer.
Also under RedHat Linux 5.0, the crypt module now needs the
-lcrypt option. Uncomment this flag in Modules/Setup, or
comment out the crypt module in the same file.
FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
the correct order with the defaults. Remove "-ltermcap" from
the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
required on your platform. Normally, it would be linked
automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
DEC Unix: When enabling threads, use --with-dec-threads, not
--with-thread. When using GCC, it is possible to get an
internal compiler error if optimization is used. This was
reported for GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c. Manually compile
the affected file without optimization to solve the problem.
DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
AIX: A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
place. See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
(The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
has been worked around by a minimal code change.)
In addition, Gary Duzan has a hint for C++ users: to enable
full C++ module support, set CC="xlC" (or CC="xlC_r" for thread
support in AIX 4.2.1).
HP-UX: Please read the file Misc/HPUX-NOTES for shared libraries.
When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
OPT variable in the top-level Makefile; reported by Pat Knight
this seems to make a difference (at least for HP-UX 10.20)
even though config.h defines it.
Minix: When using ack, use "CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=: ./configure"!
SCO: The following only apply to SCO 3; Python builds out of the box
on SCO 5 (or so I've heard).
1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
defs. This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
needed be set to:
LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
SunOS 4.x: When using the standard "cc" compiler, certain modules may
not be compilable because they use non-K&R syntax. You should
be able to get a basic Python interpreter by commenting out
such modules in the Modules/Setup file, but I really recommend
using gcc.
When using the SunPro C compiler, you may want to use the
'-Xa' option instead of '-Xc', to enable some needed non-ANSI
Sunisms.
NeXT: To build fat binaries, use the --with-next-archs switch
described below.
QNX: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free. I used the following process to build,
test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
2) copy Modules/Setup.in to Modules/Setup; edit Modules/Setup to
activate everything that makes sense for your system... tested
here at QNX with the following modules:
array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
_locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop, rgbimg, rotor,
select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop, rgbimg
3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
or, if you feel the need for speed:
make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port. :-\
5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
little tight. To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
in the Modules directory to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
BeOS: Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
See BeOS/README for notes about compiling/installing Python on
BeOS R3 or later. Note that only the PowerPC platform is
supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are supported for R4.
Cray T3E: Konrad Hinsen writes:
1) Don't use gcc. It compiles Python/graminit.c into something
that the Cray assembler doesn't like. Cray's cc seems to work
fine.
2) Uncomment modules md5 (won't compile) and audioop (will
crash the interpreter during the test suite).
If you run the test suite, two tests will fail (rotate and
binascii), but these are not the modules you'd expect to need
on a Cray.
SGI: SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
is supposed to build. This means that whenever you say "make"
it will redo the link step. The remedy is to use SGI's much
smarter "smake " utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make. If
you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
A bug in the MIPSpro 7.1 compiler's optimizer seems to break
Modules/pypcre.c. The short term solution is to compile it
without optimization. The bug is fixed in version 7.2.1 of
the compiler.
A bug in gcc-2.8.1 sets sys.maxint to -1 which *also* seems to
break Modules/pypcre.c. The egcs versions of gcc fix this
problem. Or use configure --without-gcc to compile with SGI's
compiler, if you have it. (Raj Srinivasan, Kelvin Chu)
OS/2: If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
and type NMAKE. Threading and sockets are supported by default
in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
Configuring threads
-------------------
The main switch to configure threads is to run the configure script
(see below) with the --with-thread switch (on DEC, use
--with-dec-threads). Unfortunately, on some platforms, additional
compiler and/or linker options are required. Below is a table of
those options, collected by Bill Janssen. I would love to automate
this process more, but the information below is not enough to write a
patch for the configure.in file, so manual intervention is required.
If you patch the configure.in file and are confident that the patch
works, please send me the patch. (Don't bother patching the configure
script itself -- it is regenerated each the configure.in file
changes.)
Compiler switches for threads
.............................
OS/Compiler/threads Switches for use with threads
(POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4) (1) compile only (2) compile & link
SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris (1) -D_REENTRANT (2) -mt
SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX (1) -D_REENTRANT
DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE (1) -D_REENTRANT (2) -threads
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE (1) -D_REENTRANT (2) -threads
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX (1) -D_REENTRANT (2) -pthread
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7 (nothing)
(buhrt@iquest.net)
AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE (nothing)
(buhrt@iquest.net)
IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX (nothing)
(robertl@cwi.nl)
Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
...........................................
OS/threads Libraries/switches for use with threads
SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris -lthread
SunOS 5.5/POSIX -lpthread
DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
(butenhof@zko.dec.com)
AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE} (nothing)
(buhrt@iquest.net)
IRIX 6.2/POSIX -lpthread
(jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
Configuring additional built-in modules
---------------------------------------
You can configure the interpreter to contain fewer or more built-in
modules by editing the file Modules/Setup. This file is initially
copied (when the toplevel Makefile makes Modules/Makefile for the
first time) from Setup.in; if it does not exist yet, make a copy
yourself. Never edit Setup.in -- always edit Setup. Read the
comments in the file for information on what kind of edits you can
make. When you have edited Setup, Makefile and config.c in Modules
will automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make in the
toplevel directory. (When working inside the Modules directory, use
"make Makefile; make".)
The default collection of modules should build on any Unix system, but
many optional modules should work on all modern Unices (e.g. try dbm,
nis, termios, timing, syslog, curses, new, soundex, parser). Often
the quickest way to determine whether a particular module works or not
is to see if it will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get
compilation or link errors, disable it -- you're missing support.
On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware.
For SunOS and Solaris, enable module "sunaudiodev" to support the
audio device.
In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
(the makesetup script processes both). You may find it more
convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone. Then, when
installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
file.
Setting the optimization/debugging options
------------------------------------------
If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
on most platforms. The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
(likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
set of libraries to link with).
Testing
-------
To test the interpreter that you have just built, type "make test".
This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
the compiled files left by the previous test run). The test set
produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
skipped tests due to an optional feature that can't be imported (if
you want to test those modules, edit Modules/Setup to configure them).
If a messages is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
dump is produced, something's wrong. On some Linux systems (those
that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
non-standard-compliant implementation of strftime() in the C library.
Please ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
*don't* include the output of "make test". It is useless. Run the
test that fails manually, as follows:
python ../Lib/test/test_whatever.py
(substituting the top of the source tree for .. if you built in a
different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.
Installing
----------
To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
(see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
just type
make install
This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories the
directory given with the --prefix option to configure or the 'prefix'
Make variable (default /usr/local), and all binary and other
platform-specific files in subdirectories if the directory given by
--exec-prefix or the 'exec_prefix' Make variable (defaults to the
--prefix directory).
All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
"/usr/local/lib/python2.0/" by default. The Python binary is
installed as "python2.0" and a hard link named "python" is created.
The only file not installed with a version number in its name is the
manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1" by default.
If you have a previous installation of a pre-2.0 Python that you don't
want to replace yet, use
make altinstall
This installs the same set of files as "make install" except it
doesn't create the hard link to "python2.0" named "python" and it
doesn't install the manual page at all.
The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
Emacs. (But then again, more recent versions of Emacs may already
have it!) This is the file Misc/python-mode.el; follow the
instructions that came with Emacs for installation of site specific
files.
Configuration options and variables
-----------------------------------
Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
script.
WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
must run "make clean" before rebuilding. Exceptions to this rule:
after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
Modules/getpath.o.
--with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
it finds it. If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
--without-gcc. You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
option.
--prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*. If you pass
--exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
interpreter binary). Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
Modules/config.c is compiled. Passing make the option
prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
about the install prefix...
--with-readline: This option is no longer supported. To use GNU
readline, enable module "readline" in the Modules/Setup file.
--with-thread: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple threads.
To enable this, pass --with-thread. (--with-threads is an
alias.) If the library required for threads lives in a
peculiar place, you can use --with-thread=DIRECTORY. NOTE:
you must also enable the thread module by uncommenting it in
the Modules/Setup file. (Threads aren't enabled automatically
because there are run-time penalties when support for them is
compiled in even if you don't use them.) IMPORTANT: run "make
clean" after changing (either enabling or disabling) this
option, or you will get link errors! Note: for DEC Unix use
--with-dec-threads instead.
--with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
library!) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
is the absolute pathname of the dl library. (Don't bother on
IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
shared libraries.) Support for this feature is deprecated.
--with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumoured to be supported
on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST. This is done using a
combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
(ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
can be found at
ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z). To
enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call the
configure passing it the option
--with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
(Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
linking using shared libraries.) Support for this feature is
deprecated.
--with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
(default the empty string) using the options
--with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively. E.g.
if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C compiler
to use the shared C library, you can pass --with-libc=-lc_s.
These libraries are passed after all other libraries, the C
library last.
--with-next-archs='arch1 arch2': Under NEXTSTEP, this will build
all compiled binaries with the architectures listed. Includes
correctly setting the target architecture specific resource
directory. (This option is not supported on other platforms.)
--with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python
linked against.
Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
-------------------------------------------------------------
If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
architecture you want to support. If the make program supports the
VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
appropriate machine with the appropriate options). This creates the
necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein. The Makefiles
contain a line VPATH=... which points to directory containing the
actual sources. (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
$ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
$ cd /usr/tmp/python
$ ~guido/src/python/configure
[...]
$ make
[...]
$
Note that Modules/Makefile copies the original Setup file to the build
directory if it finds no Setup file there. This means that you can
edit the Setup file for each architecture independently. For this
reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
automatically, as they might overwrite local changes. To force a copy
of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file. (The
makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
Building on non-UNIX systems
----------------------------
For Windows 95/98 or NT, assuming you have MS VC++ 5.0 or 6.0, the
project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw. (The
project files are for VC++ 5.0, but VC++ 6.0 will convert them for
you -- start VC++ and then use Open Workspace.)
For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular Windows 3.1 and
for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
for use with the CodeWarrior compiler. If you are interested in Mac
development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
(http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
platforms -- see http://www.python.org/python/.
To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
has already been done for you). A good start is to copy the file
config.h.in to config.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
configuration of your system. Most symbols must simply be defined as
1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
otherwise; however RETSIGTYPE must always be defined, either as int or
as void, and the *_t type symbols must be defined as some variant of
int if they need to be defined at all.
Miscellaneous issues
====================
Documentation
-------------
All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats. In
order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API.
Especially the Library Reference is of immense value since much of
Python's power (including the built-in data types and functions!) is
described there.
All documentation is also available online via the Python web site
(http://www.python.org/, see below). It is available online for
occaissional reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for
faster access. The documents are available in HTML, PostScript, PDF,
HTML Help, and LaTeX; the LaTeX version is primarily for documentation
authors or people with special formatting requirements.
Emacs mode
----------
There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
Misc/python-mode.el. Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it
is now maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw
<bwarsaw@python.org>. The latest version, along with various
other contributed Python-related Emacs goodies, is online at
<http://www.python.org/emacs/python-mode>. And if you are planning to
edit the Python C code, please pick up the latest version of CC Mode
<http://www.python.org/emacs/cc-mode>; it contains a "python" style
used throughout most of the Python C source files.
Web site
--------
Python's own web site has URL http://www.python.org/. Come visit us!
There are a number of mirrors, and a list of mirrors is accessible
from the home page -- try a mirror that's close you you.
Ftp site
--------
Python's own ftp site is ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/. There are
numerous mirrors; the list of mirrors is accessible from
http://www.python.org/.
Newsgroups
----------
Read comp.lang.python, a high-volume discussion newsgroup about
Python, or comp.lang.python.announce, a low-volume moderated newsgroup
for Python-related announcements. These are also accessible as
mailing lists, see the next item.
Archives are accessible via Deja News; the Python website has a
query form for the archives at http://www.python.org/search/.
Mailing lists
-------------
See http://www.python.org/psa/MailingLists.html for an overview of the
many Python related mailing lists.
Bug reports
-----------
Bugs are best reported to the comp.lang.python newsgroup (or the
Python mailing list) -- see the section "Newsgroups" above. Before
posting, check the newsgroup archives (see above) to see if your bug
has already been reported! If you don't want to go public, send them
to me: <guido@python.org>.
Questions
---------
For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
above). If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
mailing list, send questions to <python-help@python.org> (a group of
volunteers which does *not* include me). Because of my work and email
volume, I'm often be slow in answering questions sent to me directly;
I prefer to answer questions posted to the newsgroup.
The Tk interface
----------------
Tk (the user interface component of John Ousterhout's Tcl language) is
also usable from Python. Since this requires that you first build and
install Tcl/Tk, the Tk interface is not enabled by default. Python
supports all Tcl/Tk versions from version 7.5/4.1 through 8.0 (and it
is expected that it will also work with newer versions). Tcl/Tk
7.4/4.0 is no longer supported. 8.0 or any later non-alpha non-beta
release is recommended.
See http://sunscript.sun.com/ for more info on Tcl/Tk, including the
on-line manual pages.
To enable the Python/Tk interface, once you've built and installed
Tcl/Tk, load the file Modules/Setup in your favorite text editor and
search for the string "_tkinter". Then follow the instructions found
there. If you have installed Tcl/Tk or X11 in unusual places, you
will have to edit the first line to fix or add -I and -L options.
(Also see the general instructions at the top of that file.)
There is little documentation on how to use Tkinter; however most of
the Tk manual pages apply quite straightforwardly. Begin with
fetching the "Tk Lifesaver" document,
e.g. ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/tkinter-doc.tar.gz (a gzipped
tar file containing a PostScript file) or the on-line version
http://www.python.org/doc/life-preserver/index.html. Reading the
Tkinter.py source will reveal most details on how Tkinter calls are
translated into Tcl code.
A more recent introduction to Tkinter programming, by Fredrik Lundh,
is at http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/index.htm.
There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory, in the subdirectories
guido, matt and www (the matt and guido subdirectories have been
overhauled to use more recent Tkinter coding conventions).
Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
lives in Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
(lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
Modules/_tkinter.c. Demos and normal Tk applications only import the
Python Tkinter module -- only the latter uses the C _tkinter module
directly. In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
and linked into the Python interpreter -- the _tkinter line in the
Setup file does this. In order to find the Python Tkinter module,
sys.path must be set correctly -- the TKPATH assignment in the Setup
file takes care of this, but only if you install Python properly
("make install libinstall"). (You can also use dynamic loading for
the C _tkinter module, in which case you must manually fix up sys.path
or set $PYTHONPATH for the Python Tkinter module.)
Distribution structure
----------------------
Most subdirectories have their own README file. Most files have
comments.
Demo/ Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
Grammar/ Input for the parser generator
Include/ Public header files
Lib/ Python library modules
Makefile.in Source from which config.status creates Makefile
Misc/ Miscellaneous useful files
Modules/ Implementation of most built-in modules
Objects/ Implementation of most built-in object types
PC/ PC porting files (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
PCbuild/ Directory where you should build for Windows NT/95
Parser/ The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
Python/ The "compiler" and interpreter
README The file you're reading now
Tools/ Some useful programs written in Python
acconfig.h Additional input for the autoheader program
config.h.in Source from which config.status creates config.h
configure Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
configure.in Configuration specification (GNU autoconf input)
install-sh Shell script used to install files
The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
the configuration and build processes:
Makefile Build rules
config.cache cache of configuration variables
config.h Configuration header
config.log Log from last configure run
config.status Status from last run of configure script
libpython2.0.a The library archive
python The executable interpreter
tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs
How to reach the author
=======================
Guido van Rossum
BeOpen.com
160 Saratoga Avenue, Suite 46
Santa Clara, CA 95051
E-mail: guido@beopen.com or guido@python.org
Copyright notice
================
The Python source is copyrighted, but you can freely use and copy it
as long as you don't change or remove the copyright notice. The
copyright notice is found in the Misc/COPYRIGHT file.
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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