Building wxPython on Win32 -------------------------- Building wxPython for use on win32 systems is a fairly simple process consisting of just a few steps. However depending on where you get your sources from and what your desired end result is, there are several permutations of those steps. At a high level the basic steps are: 1. Get the sources 2. Build the wxWindows DLL 3. Build and Install wxPython We'll go into more detail of each of these steps below, but first a few bits of background information on tools. I use a tool called SWIG (http://www.swig.org) to help generate the C++ sources used in the wxPython extension module. However you don't need to have SWIG unless you want to modify the *.i files. I've made several modifications to SWIG specific to wxPython's needs and so the modified sources are included in the wx CVS at.../wxPython/wxSWIG. But because of the size and since most people won't need it my SWIG is not included in the wxPythonSrc tarball. You'll need to get it from CVS or a CVS snapshot. If you need to modify the *.i files for wxPython then change to this directory and run: nmake -f makefile.vc Then you'll need to change a flag in the setup.py script as described below so the wxPython build process will use SWIG if needed. I use the new Python Distutils tool to build wxPython. It is included with Python 2.0, but if you want to use Python 1.5.2 or 1.6 then you'll need to download and install Distutils 1.0 from http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/ I use Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (5.0 with the service packs should work also) to compile the wxPython C++ sources. Since I am using Distutils it should be easier now to build with other win32 compilers such as the free mingw32 or Borland compilers, but I havn't tried them yet. If anybody wants to try it I'll take any required patches for the setup script and for these instructions. UNICODE ------- To build the version of wxWindows/wxPython that uses the unicode version of the Win32 APIs, just follow the steps below with these changes: a. You'll need the MSLU runtime DLL and import lib. The former can be downloaded from Microsoft, the latter is part of the latest Platform SDK from Microsoft (see msdn.microsoft.com for details). An alternative implementation of import lib can be downloaded from http://libunicows.sourceforge.net b. Add "UNICODE=1 MSLU=1" to the nmake command line when building wxWindows. c. Add "UNICODE=1" to the setup.py commandline when building wxPython. d. See the notes in CHANGES.txt about unicode. And now on to the fun stuff... 1. Get the sources ------------------ A. You can either use a tarball with the released version of the source code for wxWindows/wxPython, or you can get current development sources from the CVS repository. (Some information about annonymous CVS access is at the http://wxwindows.org/cvs.htm site.) The advantage of using CVS is that you can easily update as soon as the developers check in new sources or fixes. The advantage of using a released version is that it usually has had more thorough testing done. You can decide which method is best for you. The released version file is named wxPythonSrc-[version].tar.gz and is available from the wxPython website at http://wxpython.org/download.php. You can use WinZip to unpack it if you don't have tar and gzip. B. Once you get the sources be sure to put them in a path without a space in it (i.e., NOT c:\Program Files\wx) and set an environment variable named WXWIN to the top level directory. For example: set WXWIN=c:\wx\wxPythonSrc-2.4.0.4 You'll probably want to add that line to your autoexec.bat or System Properties depending on the type of system you are on. C. Change to the %WXWIN%\include\wx\msw directory and copy setup0.h to setup.h and then edit setup.h. This is how you control which parts of wxWindows are compiled into or left out of the build, simply by turning options on or off. I have the following differences from the default setup0.h in my setup.h, but you can experiment with other settings if you like: WXWIN_COMPATIBILITY_2_2 0 wxDIALOG_UNIT_COMPATIBILITY 0 wxUSE_DEBUG_CONTEXT 1 wxUSE_MEMORY_TRACING 1 wxUSE_CMDLINE_PARSER 0 wxUSE_FSVOLUME 0 wxUSE_DIALUP_MANAGER 0 wxUSE_DYNAMIC_LOADER 0 wxUSE_TREELAYOUT 0 wxUSE_MS_HTML_HELP 0 wxUSE_POSTSCRIPT 1 wxUSE_DYNLIB_CLASS 1 ** NEW ** Be sure that wxUSE_GLCANVAS is defined to be 0 as wxPython now keeps its own copy of the glcanvas sources and expects that it is not in the main library. This is done to reduce the number of dependant DLLs on the core library and therefore help reduce startup time. 2. Build the wxWindows DLL --------------------------- A. Although MSVC project files are provided I always use the makefiles to build wxWindows because by default the flags are compatible with Python, (and I make sure they stay that way.) You would have to edit the project files a bit to make it work otherwise. B. There are three different types of wxWindows DLLs that can be produced by the VC makefile simply by providing a flag on the nmake command-line, I call the three types DEBUG, FINAL, and HYBRID. Here are some more details: DEBUG Specified with "FINAL=0" and produces a DLL named wxmsw[version]d.dll. This DLL is compiled with full debugging information and with the __WXDEBUG__ macro set, which enables some debugging-only code in wxWindows such as assertions and failure log messages. The /MDd flag is used which means that it is linked with the debugging version of the C runtime library and also that you must use the debugging version of Python, (python_d.exe and pythonXX_d.dll) which also means that all extensions loaded by Python should also have the _d in the name. With this option you can use the MSVC debugger to trace though the Python interpreter, as well as the code for the wxPython extension and the wxWindows DLL. FINAL Specified with "FINAL=1" and produces a DLL named wxmsw[version].dll. This DLL is compiled with optimizations turned on and without debugging information and without __WXDEBUG__. The /MD flag is used which means that you can use this version with the standard python.exe. HYBRID Specified with "FINAL=hybrid" and produces a DLL named wxmsw[version]h.dll. This DLL is almost the same as the FINAL version except the __WXDEBUG__ is used which means that you will get extra runtime assertions and validations from wxWindows. If any of these fail then they are turned into a Python exception that you can catch and deal with in your code. This is the version that I use when making the binary installer for win32. Since different DLL names and object file directories are used you can build all three types if you like. C. Change to the %WXWIN%\src\msw directory and type the following command, using the value for FINAL that you want: nmake -f makefile.vc dll FINAL=hybrid Your machine will then crunch away for possibly a long time, depending on your hardware, and when it's done you should have a DLL and some library files in %WXWIN%\lib. D. You'll either need to add %WXWIN%\lib to the PATH or copy the DLL file to a directory already on the PATH so the DLL can be found at runtime. Another option is to copy the DLL to the directory that the wxPython pacakge is installed to, for example, c:\Python22\lib\site-packages\wxPython. E. You can test your build by changing to one of the directories under %WXWIN%\samples or %WXWIN\demos and typing (using the right FINAL flag): nmake -f makefile.vc FINAL=hybrid WXUSINGDLL=1 and then executing the resulting .exe file. 3. Build and Install wxPython ----------------------------- A. As mentioned previouslly, wxPython is built with the standard Python Distutils tool. If you are using Python 2.0 or later you are all set, otherwise you need to download and install Distutils 1.0 from http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/. B. Change to the root wxPython directory and look at the setup.py file. This is the script that configures and defines all the information that Distutils needs to build wxPython. There are some options near the begining of the script that you may want or need to change based on what options you have selected up to this point, (type of DLL built, sources from tar.gz or from CVS, etc.) You can either change these flags directly in setup.py or supply them on the command-line. BUILD_GLCANVAS Set to zero if you don't want to build the Open GL canvas extension module. BUILD_OGL Set to zero if you don't want to build the Object Graphics Library extension module. BUILD_STC Set to zero if you don't want to build the wxStyledTextCtrl (the Scintilla wrapper) extension module. USE_SWIG If you have edited any of the *.i files you will need to set this flag to non-zero so SWIG will be executed to regenerate the wrapper C++ and shadow python files. etc. C. To build and install wxPython you simply need to execute the setup.py script. If you have more than one version of Python installed, be sure to execute setup.py with the version you want to build wxPython for. Depending on what kind of wxWindows DLL you built there are different command-line parameters you'll want to pass to setup (in addition to possibly one or more of the above): FINAL: python setup.py install DEBUG: python setup.py build --debug install HYBRID: python setup.py HYBRID=1 install NOTE: If you get an internal compiler error from MSVC then you need to edit setup.py and add in the /GX- flag that is normally commented out. Just search for "GX-" and uncomment it so it is put into the cflags list. If you would like to install to someplace 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 wxPyrthon is contained in in the PYTHONPATH environment variable. D. At this point you should be able to change into the wxPython\demo directory and run the demo: python demo.py E. If you would like to make a test build that doesn't overwrite the installed version of wxPython you can do so with one of these commands instead of the install command above: FINAL: python setup.py build_ext --inplace DEBUG: python setup.py build_ext --debug --inplace HYBRID: python setup.py HYBRID=1 build_ext --inplace This will build the wxPython package in the local wxPython directory instead of installing it under your Python installation. To run using this test version just add the base wxPython source directory to the PYTHONPATH: set PYTHONPATH=%WXDIR%\wxPython cd %WXDIR%\wxPython\demo python demo.py That's all folks! ----------------- robin@alldunn.com