1 Building wxPython 2.5 for Development and Testing
2 =================================================
4 This file describes how I build wxWidgets and wxPython while doing
5 development and testing, and is meant to help other people that want
6 to do the same thing. I'll assume that you are using either a CVS
7 snapshot from http://wxWidgets.org/snapshots/, a checkout from CVS, or
8 one of the released wxPythonSrc-2.5.* tarballs. I'll also assume that
9 you know your way around your system, the compiler, etc. and most
10 importantly, that you know what you are doing! ;-)
12 If you want to also install the version of wxPython you build to be in
13 your site-packages dir and be your default version of wxPython, then a
14 few additional steps are needed, and you may want to use slightly
15 different options. See INSTALL.txt for more details. If you only use
16 the instructions in this BUILD.txt file then you will end up with a
17 separate installation of wxPython and you can switch back and forth
18 between this and the release version that you may already have
21 If you want to make changes to any of the ``*.i`` files, (SWIG interface
22 definition files,) or to regenerate the extension sources or renamer
23 modules, then you will need an up to date version of SWIG. Either get
24 and build the current CVS version, or version 1.3.20, and then apply
25 the patches in wxPython/SWIG. See the README.txt in that dir for
26 details about each patch and also info about those that may already
27 have been applied to the SWIG sources. If you install this build of
28 SWIG to a location that is not on the PATH (so it doesn't interfere
29 with an existing SWIG install for example) then you can set a setup.py
30 command-line variable named SWIG to be the full path name of the
31 executable and the wxPython build will use it. See below for an
37 Building on Unix-like Systems (e.g. Linux and OS X)
38 ---------------------------------------------------
40 These platforms are built almost the same way while in development
41 so I'll combine the descriptions about their build process here.
42 First we will build wxWidgets and install it to an out of the way
43 place, then do the same for wxPython.
46 1. Create a build directory in the main wxWidgets dir, and configure
47 wxWidgets. If you want to have multiple builds with different
48 configure options, just use different subdirectories. I normally
49 put the configure command in a script named ".configure" in each
50 build dir so I can easily blow away everything in the build dir and
51 rerun the script without having to remember the options I used
56 ../configure --prefix=/opt/wx/2.5 \
59 --disable-monolithic \
64 On OS X of course you'll want to use --with-mac instead of
65 --with-gtk. For GTK2 and unicode add:
70 Notice that I used a prefix of /opt/wx/2.5. You can use whatever
71 path you want, such as a path in your HOME dir or even one of the
72 standard prefix paths such as /usr or /usr/local if you like, but
73 using /opt this way lets me easily have multiple versions and ports
74 of wxWidgets "installed" and makes it easy to switch between them,
75 without impacting any versions of wxWidgets that may have been
76 installed via an RPM or whatever. For the rest of the steps below
77 be sure to also substitute "/opt/wx/2.5" with whatever prefix you
78 choose for your build.
80 If you want to use the image and zlib libraries included with
81 wxWidgets instead of those already installed on your system, (for
82 example, to reduce dependencies on 3rd party libraries) then you
83 can add these flags to the configure command::
85 --with-libjpeg=builtin \
86 --with-libpng=builtin \
87 --with-libtiff=builtin \
91 2. To build and install wxWidgets you could just use the "make"
92 command but there are other libraries besides the main wxWidgets
93 libs that also need to be built so again I make a script to do it
94 all for me so I don't forget anything. This time it is called
95 ".make" (I use the leading ". so when I do ``rm -r *`` in my build
96 dir I don't lose my scripts too.) This is what it looks like::
99 && make -C contrib/src/gizmos $* \
100 && make -C contrib/src/ogl CXXFLAGS="-DwxUSE_DEPRECATED=0" $* \
101 && make -C contrib/src/stc $* \
102 && make -C contrib/src/xrc $*
104 So you just use .make as if it where make, but don't forget to set
105 the execute bit on .make first!::
110 When it's done you should have an installed set of files under
111 /opt/wx/2.5 containing just wxWidgets. Now to use this version of
112 wxWidgets you just need to add /opt/wx/2.5/bin to the PATH and set
113 LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH on OS X) to /opt/wx/2.5/lib.
116 3. I also have a script to help me build wxPython and it is checked in
117 to the CVS as wxWidgets/wxPython/b, but probably don't want to use
118 it as it's very cryptic and expects that you want to run SWIG, so
119 if you don't have the latest patched up version of SWIG then you'll
120 probably get stuck. So I'll just give the raw commands instead.
122 We're not going to install the development version of wxPython with
123 these commands, so it won't impact your already installed version
124 of the latest release. You'll be able test with this version when
125 you want to, and use the installed release version the rest of the
126 time. If do want to install the development verison please read
129 If you have more than one version of Python on your system then be
130 sure to use the version of Python that you want to use when running
131 wxPython programs to run the setup.py commands below. I'll be
134 Make sure that the first wx-config found on the PATH is the one you
135 installed above, and then change to the wxWidgets/wxPython dir and
136 run the this command::
139 python2.3 setup.py build_ext --inplace --debug
141 If your new wx-config script is not on the PATH, or there is some
142 other version of it found first, then you can add this to the
143 command line to ensure your new one is used instead::
145 WX_CONFIG=/opt/wx/2.5/bin/wx-config
147 If you are building with GTK2 then add the following flags to the
150 WXPORT=gtk2 UNICODE=1
152 If you are wanting to have the source files regenerated with swig,
153 then you need to turn on the USE_SWIG flag and optionally tell it
154 where to find the new swig executable, so add these flags::
156 USE_SWIG=1 SWIG=/opt/swig/bin/swig
158 If you get errors about wxGLCanvas or being unable to find libGLU
159 or something like that then you can add BUILD_GLCANVAS=0 to the
160 setup.py command line to disable the building of the glcanvas
163 When the setup.py command is done you should have fully populated
164 wxPython and wx packages locally in wxWidgets/wxPython/wxPython and
165 .../wx, with all the extension modules (``*.so`` files) located in the
169 4. To run code with the development verison of wxPython, just set the
170 PYTHONPATH to the wxPython dir in the CVS tree. For example::
172 export LD_LIBRARY=/opt/wx/2.5/lib
173 export PYTHONPATH=/myprojects/wxWidgets/wxPython
174 cd /myprojects/wxWidgets/wxPython/demo
177 OS X NOTE: You need to use "pythonw" on the command line to run
178 wxPython applications. This version of the Python executable is
179 part of the Python Framework and is allowed to interact with the
180 display. You can also double click on a .py or a .pyw file from
181 the finder (assuming that PythonLauncher is still associated with
182 these file extensions) and it will launch the Framework version of
183 Python for you. For information about creating Applicaiton Bundles
184 of your wxPython apps please see the wiki and the mail lists.
186 SOLARIS NOTE: If you get unresolved symbol errors when importing
187 wxPython and you are running on Solaris and building with gcc, then
188 you may be able to work around the problem by uncommenting a bit of
189 code in setup.py and building again. Look for 'SunOS' in setup.py
190 and uncomment the block containing it. The problem is that Sun's ld
191 does not automatically add libgcc to the link step.
199 The Windows builds currently require the use of Microsoft Visual C++.
200 Theoretically, other compilers (such as mingw32 or the Borland
201 compilers) can also be used but I've never done the work to make that
202 happen. If you want to try that then first you'll want to find out if
203 there are any tricks that have to be done to make Python extension
204 modules using that compiler, and then make a few changes to setup.py
205 to accomodate that. (And send the patches to me.) If you plan on
206 using VisualStudio.Net (a.k.a. MSVC 7.1) keep in mind that you'll also
207 have to build Python and any other extension modules that you use with
208 that compiler because a different version of the C runtime likbrary is
209 used. The Python executable that comes from PythonLabs and the
210 wxPython extensions that I distribute are built with MSVC 6 with all
211 the Service Packs applied.
213 If you want to build a debugable version of wxWidgets and wxPython you
214 will need to have also built a debug version of Python and any other
215 extension modules you need to use. You can tell if you have them
216 already if there is a _d in the file names, for example python_d.exe
217 or python23_d.dll. If you don't need to trace through the C/C++ parts
218 of the code with the debugger then building the normal (or hybrid)
219 version is fine, and you can use the regular python executables with
222 Just like the unix versions I also use some scripts to help me build
223 wxWidgets, but I use some non-standard stuff to do it. So if you want
224 to use them too you'll need to get a copy or 4DOS or 4NT from
225 http://www.jpsoft.com/ and also a copy of unix-like cat and sed
226 programs. You can also do by hand what my scripts are doing, but
227 there are a lof steps involved and I won't be going into details
228 here. There is a copy of my build scripts in wxWidgets\wxPython\distrib\msw
231 1. Set an environment variable to the root of the wxWidgets source
234 set WXWIN=e:\projects\wxWidgets
236 2. Copy setup0.h to setup.h
238 cd %WXWIN%\include\wx\msw
239 copy setup0.h setup.h
242 3. Edit %WXWIN%\include\wx\msw\setup.h and change a few settings.
243 Some of them are changed by my build scripts depending on the type
244 of build (debug/hybrid, unicode/ansi). I change a few of the other
245 defaults to have these values::
247 wxDIALOG_UNIT_COMPATIBILITY 0
248 wxUSE_DEBUG_CONTEXT 1
249 wxUSE_MEMORY_TRACING 1
250 wxUSE_DIALUP_MANAGER 0
253 wxUSE_AFM_FOR_POSTSCRIPT 0
256 4. Make a %WXWIN%\BIN directory and add it to the PATH. My build
257 scripts will copy the wxWidgets DLLs there.
260 5. Change to the %WXWIN%\build\msw directory and copy my build scripts
264 6. Use the .make.btm command to build wxWidgets. It needs one
265 command-line parameter which controls what kind of build(s) to do.
266 Use one of the following::
268 debug Build debug version
269 hybrid Build hybrid version
270 both Both debug and hybrid
271 debug-uni Build a debug unicode library
272 hybrid-uni Hybrid unicode (see the pattern yet? ;-)
273 both-uni and finally both unicode libraries
279 You can also pass additional command line parameters as needed and
280 they will all be passed on to the nmake commands, for example to
286 7. When that is done it will have built the main wxWidgets DLLs and
287 also some of the contribs DLLs. There should be a ton of DLLs in
288 %WXDIR%\bin and lots of lib files and other stuff in
292 8. Building wxPython on Windows is very similar to doing it for the
293 unix systems. We're not going to install the development version
294 of wxPython with these commands, so it won't impact your already
295 installed version of the latest release. You'll be able to test
296 with this version when you want to, and use the installed release
297 version the rest of the time. If you ever do want to install the
298 development verison please refer to INSTALL.txt.
300 Change to the wxWidgets\wxPython dir and run the this command,
301 makeing sure that you use the version of python that you want to
302 build for (if you have more than one on your system)::
305 python setup.py build_ext --inplace
307 If you are wanting to have the source files regenerated with swig,
308 then you need to turn on the USE_SWIG flag and optionally tell it
309 where to find the new swig executable, so add these flags::
311 USE_SWIG=1 SWIG=e:\projects\SWIG-cvs\swig.exe
313 If you built a Unicode version of wxWidgets and want to also build
314 the Unicode version of wxPython then add this flag::
318 If you have a debug version of Python and wxWidgets and want to
319 build a debug version of wxPython too, add the --debug flag to the
320 command line. You should then end up with a set of ``*_d.pyd``
321 files in the wx package and you'll have to run ``python_d.exe`` to
322 use them. The debug and hybrid(release) versions can coexist.
324 When the setup.py command is done you should have fully populated
325 wxPython and wx packages locally in wxWidgets/wxPython/wxPython and
326 wxWidgets/wxPython/wx, with all the extension modules (``*.pyd``
327 files) located in the wx package.
330 9. To run code with the development verison of wxPython, just set the
331 PYTHONPATH to the wxPython dir in the CVS tree. For example::
333 set PYTHONPATH=e:\projects\wxWidgets\wxPython
334 cd e:\projects\wxWidgets\wxPython