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This is Python version 1.6 ========================== Copyright (c) 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved. License information ------------------- See the file "LICENSE" for information on terms & conditions for accessing and otherwise using this software, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. What's new in this release? --------------------------- See http://www.python.org/1.6/. 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/. 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. 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://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/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/python1.6/" by default. The Python binary is installed as "python1.6" 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-1.6 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 "python1.6" 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@beopen.com>. 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 and patches ----------------------- To report a bug or contribute a patch, use the Python project at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/python. 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://www.tcltk.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. At least one book has been published on Tkinter; go to the PSA bookstore for more information: http://www.python.org/psa/bookstore/. 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 libpython1.6.a The library archive python The executable interpreter tags, TAGS Tags files for vi and Emacs That's all, folks! ------------------ --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)