Fix to wxChar* access.

[wxWidgets.git] / wxPython / docs / BUILD.txt

Building wxPython 2.5 for Development and Testing
=================================================

This file describes how I build wxWidgets and wxPython while doing
development and testing, and is meant to help other people that want
to do the same thing.  I'll assume that you are using either a CVS
snapshot from http://wxWidgets.org/snapshots/, a checkout from CVS, or
one of the released wxPythonSrc-2.5.* tarballs.  I'll also assume that
you know your way around your system, the compiler, etc. and most
importantly, that you know what you are doing!  ;-)

If you want to also install the version of wxPython you build to be in
your site-packages dir and be your default version of wxPython, then a
few additional steps are needed, and you may want to use slightly
different options.  See the INSTALL_ document for more details.  If
you only use the instructions in this BUILD_ document file then you
will end up with a separate installation of wxPython and you can
switch back and forth between this and the release version that you
may already have installed.

.. _INSTALL: INSTALL.html
.. _BUILD: BUILD.html

If you want to make changes to any of the ``*.i`` files, (SWIG interface
definition files,) or to regenerate the extension sources or renamer
modules, then you will need an up to date version of SWIG.  Either get
and build the current CVS version, or version 1.3.20, and then apply
the patches in wxPython/SWIG.  See the README.txt in that dir for
details about each patch and also info about those that may already
have been applied to the SWIG sources.  If you install this build of
SWIG to a location that is not on the PATH (so it doesn't interfere
with an existing SWIG install for example) then you can set a setup.py
command-line variable named SWIG to be the full path name of the
executable and the wxPython build will use it.  See below for an
example.

In the text below I'll use WXDIR with environment variable syntax
(either $WXDIR or %WXDIR%) to refer to the top level directory were
your wxWidgerts and wxPython sources are located.  It will equate to
whereever you checked out the wxWidgets module from CVS, or untarred
the wxPythonSrc tarball to.  You can either substitute the $WXDIR text
below with your actual dir, or set the value in the environment and
use it just like you see it below.

If you run into what appears to be compatibility issues between
wxWidgets and wxPython while building wxPython, be sure you are using
the wxWidgets sources included with the wxPythonSrc tarball or the CVS
snapshot, and not a previously installed version or a version
installed from one of the standard wxWidgets installers.  With the
"unstable" releases (have a odd-numbered minor release value, where
the APIs are allowed to change) there are often significant
differences between the W.X.Y release of wxWidgets and the W.X.Y.Z
release of wxPython.



Building on Unix-like Systems (e.g. Linux and OS X)
---------------------------------------------------

These platforms are built almost the same way while in development
so I'll combine the descriptions about their build process here.
First we will build wxWidgets and install it to an out of the way
place, then do the same for wxPython.


1. Create a build directory in the main wxWidgets dir, and configure
   wxWidgets.  If you want to have multiple builds with different
   configure options, just use different subdirectories.  I normally
   put the configure command in a script named ".configure" in each
   build dir so I can easily blow away everything in the build dir and
   rerun the script without having to remember the options I used
   before::

	 cd $WXDIR
         mkdir bld
         cd bld
         ../configure --prefix=/opt/wx/2.5 \
                      --with-gtk \
                      --with-opengl \
                      --disable-monolithic \
                      --enable-debug \
                      --enable-geometry \
                      --enable-sound --with-sdl \
                      --enable-display \
                      

   On OS X of course you'll want to use --with-mac instead of
   --with-gtk.  For GTK2 and unicode add::
                         
                      --enable-gtk2 \
                      --enable-unicode \

   Notice that I used a prefix of /opt/wx/2.5.  You can use whatever
   path you want, such as a path in your HOME dir or even one of the
   standard prefix paths such as /usr or /usr/local if you like, but
   using /opt this way lets me easily have multiple versions and ports
   of wxWidgets "installed" and makes it easy to switch between them,
   without impacting any versions of wxWidgets that may have been
   installed via an RPM or whatever.  For the rest of the steps below
   be sure to also substitute "/opt/wx/2.5" with whatever prefix you
   choose for your build.

   If you want to use the image and zlib libraries included with
   wxWidgets instead of those already installed on your system, (for
   example, to reduce dependencies on 3rd party libraries) then you
   can add these flags to the configure command::

                     --with-libjpeg=builtin \
                     --with-libpng=builtin \
                     --with-libtiff=builtin \
                     --with-zlib=builtin \


2. To build and install wxWidgets you could just use the "make"
   command but there are other libraries besides the main wxWidgets
   libs that also need to be built so again I make a script to do it
   all for me so I don't forget anything.  This time it is called
   ".make" (I use the leading ".  so when I do ``rm -r *`` in my build
   dir I don't lose my scripts too.)  This is what it looks like::

        make $* \
            && make -C contrib/src/gizmos $* \
            && make -C contrib/src/ogl CXXFLAGS="-DwxUSE_DEPRECATED=0" $* \
            && make -C contrib/src/stc $* \
            && make -C contrib/src/xrc $* 
   
   So you just use .make as if it where make, but don't forget to set
   the execute bit on .make first!::

         .make
         .make install

   When it's done you should have an installed set of files under
   /opt/wx/2.5 containing just wxWidgets.  Now to use this version of
   wxWidgets you just need to add /opt/wx/2.5/bin to the PATH and set
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH on OS X) to /opt/wx/2.5/lib.


3. I also have a script to help me build wxPython and it is checked in
   to the CVS as wxWidgets/wxPython/b, but you probably don't want to
   use it as it's very cryptic and expects that you want to run SWIG,
   so if you don't have the latest patched up version of SWIG then
   you'll probably get stuck.  So I'll just give the raw commands
   instead.

   We're not going to install the development version of wxPython with
   these commands, so it won't impact your already installed version
   of the latest release.  You'll be able test with this version when
   you want to, and use the installed release version the rest of the
   time.  If you want to install the development version please read
   INSTALL.txt.

   If you have more than one version of Python on your system then be
   sure to use the version of Python that you want to use when running
   wxPython programs to run the setup.py commands below.  I'll be
   using python2.3.

   Make sure that the first wx-config found on the PATH is the one you
   installed above, and then change to the $WXDIR/wxPython dir and
   run the this command::

         cd $WXDIR/wxPython
         python2.3 setup.py build_ext --inplace --debug

   If your new wx-config script is not on the PATH, or there is some
   other version of it found first, then you can add this to the
   command line to ensure your new one is used instead::

         WX_CONFIG=/opt/wx/2.5/bin/wx-config

   If you are building with GTK2 then add the following flags to the
   command line::

         WXPORT=gtk2 UNICODE=1

   If you are wanting to have the source files regenerated with swig,
   then you need to turn on the USE_SWIG flag and optionally tell it
   where to find the new swig executable, so add these flags::

         USE_SWIG=1 SWIG=/opt/swig/bin/swig

   If you get errors about being unable to find libGLU, wxGLCanvas
   being undeclared, or something similar then you can add
   BUILD_GLCANVAS=0 to the setup.py command line to disable the
   building of the glcanvas module.

   When the setup.py command is done you should have fully populated
   wxPython and wx packages locally in $WXDIR/wxPython/wxPython and
   $WXDIR/wxPython/wx, with all the extension modules (``*.so`` files)
   located in the wx package.


4. To run code with the development version of wxPython, just set the
   PYTHONPATH to the wxPython dir located in the source tree.  For
   example::

        export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/wx/2.5/lib
        export PYTHONPATH=$WXDIR/wxPython
        cd $WXDIR/wxPython/demo
        python2.3 demo.py

   OS X NOTE: You need to use "pythonw" on the command line to run
   wxPython applications.  This version of the Python executable is
   part of the Python Framework and is allowed to interact with the
   display.  You can also double click on a .py or a .pyw file from
   the finder (assuming that the PythonLauncher app is associated with
   these file extensions) and it will launch the Framework version of
   Python for you.  For information about creating Applicaiton Bundles
   of your wxPython apps please see the wiki and the mail lists.

   SOLARIS NOTE: If you get unresolved symbol errors when importing
   wxPython and you are running on Solaris and building with gcc, then
   you may be able to work around the problem by uncommenting a bit of
   code in setup.py and building again.  Look for 'SunOS' in setup.py
   and uncomment the block containing it.  The problem is that Sun's ld
   does not automatically add libgcc to the link step.




Building on Windows
-------------------

The Windows builds currently require the use of Microsoft Visual C++.
Theoretically, other compilers (such as mingw32 or the Borland
compilers) can also be used but I've never done the work to make that
happen.  If you want to try that then first you'll want to find out if
there are any tricks that have to be done to make Python extension
modules using that compiler, and then make a few changes to setup.py
to accomodate that.  (And send the patches to me.)  If you plan on
using VisualStudio.Net (a.k.a. MSVC 7.1) keep in mind that you'll also
have to build Python and any other extension modules that you use with
that compiler because a different version of the C runtime library is
used.  The Python executable that comes from PythonLabs and the
wxPython extensions that I distribute are built with MSVC 6 with all
the Service Packs applied.  This policy will change with Python 2.4
and MSVC 7.1 will be used starting with that version.

If you want to build a debuggable version of wxWidgets and wxPython you
will need to have also built a debug version of Python and any other
extension modules you need to use.  You can tell if you have them
already if there is a _d in the file names, for example python_d.exe
or python23_d.dll.  If you don't need to trace through the C/C++ parts
of the code with the debugger then building the normal (or hybrid)
version is fine, and you can use the regular python executables with
it.

Just like the unix versions I also use some scripts to help me build
wxWidgets, but I use some non-standard stuff to do it.  So if you want
to use my scripts you'll need to get a copy or 4DOS or 4NT from
http://www.jpsoft.com/ and also a copy of unix-like cat and sed
programs.  You can also do by hand what my scripts are doing, but
there are alot of steps involved and I won't be going into details
here.  There is a copy of my build scripts in %WXDIR%\\wxPython\\distrib\\msw
that you can use for reference (if you don't use them directly) for
adapting these instructions to your specific needs.  The directions
below assume that you are using my scripts.


1. Set an environment variable to the root of the wxWidgets source
   tree.  This is used by the makefiles::

         set WXWIN=%WXDIR%

2. Copy setup0.h to setup.h::

         cd %WXDIR%\include\wx\msw
         copy setup0.h setup.h


3. Edit %WXDIR%\\include\\wx\\msw\\setup.h and change a few settings.
   Some of them are changed by my build scripts depending on the type
   of build (debug/hybrid, unicode/ansi). I change a few of the other
   defaults to have these values::

         wxDIALOG_UNIT_COMPATIBILITY    0
         wxUSE_DEBUG_CONTEXT            1
         wxUSE_MEMORY_TRACING           1
         wxUSE_DIALUP_MANAGER           0
         wxUSE_GLCANVAS                 1
         wxUSE_POSTSCRIPT               1
         wxUSE_AFM_FOR_POSTSCRIPT       0
         wxUSE_DISPLAY                  1
         

4. Make sure that %WXDIR%\\lib\\vc_dll directory is on the PATH.  The
   wxWidgets DLLs will end up there as part of the build and so you'll
   need it on the PATH for them to be found at runtime.


5. Change to the %WXDIR%\\build\\msw directory and copy my build scripts
   there from their default location in %WXDIR%\\wxPython\\distrib\\msw
   if they are not present already.


6. Use the .make.btm command to build wxWidgets.  It needs one
   command-line parameter which controls what kind of build(s) to do.
   Use one of the following::

         debug          Build debug version
         hybrid         Build hybrid version
         both           Both debug and hybrid
         debug-uni      Build a debug unicode library
         hybrid-uni     Hybrid unicode (see the pattern yet? ;-)
         both-uni       and finally both unicode libraries

   For example::

         .make hybrid

    You can also pass additional command line parameters as needed and
    they will all be passed on to the nmake commands, for example to
    clean up the build::

         .make hybrid clean


7.  When that is done it will have built the main wxWidgets DLLs and
    also some of the contribs DLLs.  There should be a ton of DLLs and
    lots of lib files and other stuff in %WXDIR%\\lib\\vc_dll.


8. Building wxPython on Windows is very similar to doing it for the
   unix systems.  We're not going to install the development version
   of wxPython with these commands, so it won't impact your already
   installed version of the latest release.  You'll be able to test
   with this version when you want to, and use the installed release
   version the rest of the time.  If you ever do want to install the
   development version please refer to INSTALL.txt.

   Change to the %WXDIR%\\wxPython dir and run the this command,
   makeing sure that you use the version of python that you want to
   build for (if you have more than one on your system)::

         cd %WXDIR%\wxPython
         python setup.py build_ext --inplace 

   If you are wanting to have the source files regenerated with swig,
   then you need to turn on the USE_SWIG flag and optionally tell it
   where to find the new swig executable, so add these flags::

         USE_SWIG=1 SWIG=e:\projects\SWIG-cvs\swig.exe

   If you built a Unicode version of wxWidgets and want to also build
   the Unicode version of wxPython then add this flag::

         UNICODE=1

   If you have a debug version of Python and wxWidgets and want to
   build a debug version of wxPython too, add the --debug flag to the
   command line.  You should then end up with a set of ``*_d.pyd``
   files in the wx package and you'll have to run ``python_d.exe`` to
   use them.  The debug and hybrid(release) versions can coexist.

   When the setup.py command is done you should have fully populated
   wxPython and wx packages locally in %WXDIR%/wxPython/wxPython and
   %WXDIR%/wxPython/wx, with all the extension modules (``*.pyd``
   files) located in the wx package.


9. To run code with the development version of wxPython, just set the
   PYTHONPATH to the wxPython dir in the CVS tree.  For example::

        set PYTHONPATH=%WXDIR%\wxPython
	cd %WXDIR\wxPython\demo
        python demo.py