README for wxPythonSrc-*.tar.gz ------------------------------- Prior to version 2.3.3 of wxPython I had always made my Linux/Unix binaries based on the released binary of wxGTK and wxGTK-gl. This imposed a few restrictions and so starting with 2.3.3 I have decided to do a combined binary that inlcudes wxGTK as well as wxPython. This allows me a bit more flexibility and is consistent with how the Windows and Mac OS X binaries are built. If you are reading this file then you are probably interested in building your own copy of wxPython from the sources contained in this archive. If you wish to use the released wxGTK binary as has been done in the past then you can still follow the old build directions in wxPython/BUILD.unix.txt. If you are building for Windows or Mac OS X then you should look at wxPython/BUILD.win32.txt or wxPython/BUILD.osx.txt respectivly. If, on the other hand, you would like to build Linux/Unix binaries with a private copy of wxGTK like what I am now distributing then you'll want to follow the instructions in this file. (You should probably still read wxPython/BUILD.unix.txt though since there are other details there that you may need to be aware of. Clear as mud? Good. Let's get started. 1. We'll be making a private copy of wxGTK so it doesn't conflict with one used by wxGTK C++ apps that expect to have the default binary installed from RPM or whatever. I put it in /usr/lib/wxPython, but you can use whatever you like. I'll just set a variable to our wx prefix to reference later: export WXPREF=/usr/lib/wxPython 2. Make a build directory and configure wxGTK. cd wxPythonSrc-2.4.0 # or whatever the top-level dir is mkdir build cd build ../configure --with-gtk \ --prefix=$WXPREF \ --enable-rpath=$WXPREF/lib \ --with-opengl \ --enable-geometry \ --enable-optimise \ --enable-debug_flag \ You may want to use --enable-debug instead of --enable-optimise if you need to run though a debugger and want full debugging symbols. SOLARIS NOTE: The --enable-rpath option may cause problems when using wxGTK on Solaris when compiling wxPython in step 4 below. The woraround is to not use --enable-rpath flag for configure, but in that case all wxPython applications must have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH set to include $WXPREF/lib, or you can use the 'crle' program to modify the runtime linking environment. If this is the only installation of wxGTK on the system then you can use a system library path for WXPREF and not have to worry about it at all. If you want to use the image and zlib libraries included with wxWindows instead of those already installed on your system, (for example, to reduce dependencies on 3rd party libraries) then you can add these flags to the configure command: --with-libjpeg=builtin \ --with-libpng=builtin \ --with-libtiff=builtin \ --with-zlib=builtin \ If you would like to use GTK 2.x and unicode, then add the following flags. Please note that this is still considered beta, but does look and work quite nice for the most part: --enable-gtk2 \ --enable-unicode \ 3. Build and install wxGTK. (You may need to be root for the last step, depending on where your WXPREF is.) make make install 4. Build and install wxPython. If you want to use a different version of Python than is found by default on the PATH then specify the whole pathname in these steps. The version of Python that runs setup.py is the version wxPython will be built and installed for. (You will need to be root for the install step unless your Python is not in a system location.) cd ../wxPython python setup.py \ WX_CONFIG=$WXPREF/bin/wx-config \ build install If you are using GTK 2.x and unicode then do it this way instead: python setup.py \ WX_CONFIG=$WXPREF/bin/wx-config \ WXPORT=gtk2 UNICODE=1 \ build install If you get errors about wxGLCanvas or being unable to find libGLU or something like that then you can add BUILD_GLCANVAS=0 to the setup.py command line to disable the building of the glcanvas module. If you would like to install to some place besides the Python site-packages directory (such as to your home directory) then you can add "--root=" after the "install" command. To use wxPython like this you'll need to ensure that the directory containing wxPython is contained in the PYTHONPATH environment variable. 5. If you havn't already, get a new copy of the demo and documentation to go with the wxPython you just built and installed. See http://wxpython.org/download.php#documentation 6. Change to the demo directory and run it like this: python demo.py 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. 7. That's all, except for the having fun part! -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython!