[Python-checkins] python/dist/src README,1.186,1.187
mwh at users.sourceforge.net
mwh at users.sourceforge.net
Tue Feb 22 16:33:34 CET 2005
Update of /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src
In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv27945
Modified Files:
README
Log Message:
A few random updates to make things less horrifyingly out of date.
Delete some advice that can never, ever have worked.
There are a couple of XXX comments for bits I don't know how to
update. It would be really good not to release Python 2.5 with these
in place :)
This file is way too big. There's basically no chance of it staying
up to date.
Index: README
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/README,v
retrieving revision 1.186
retrieving revision 1.187
diff -u -d -r1.186 -r1.187
--- README 25 Jan 2005 12:40:00 -0000 1.186
+++ README 22 Feb 2005 15:33:26 -0000 1.187
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@
See the file "Misc/NEWS".
+
If you don't read instructions
------------------------------
@@ -45,30 +46,29 @@
executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
and then "make install".
-The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading,
-especially the part on customizing Modules/Setup.
+The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
What is Python anyway?
----------------------
-Python is an interpreted object-oriented programming language suitable
-(amongst other uses) for distributed application development,
-scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python is often
-compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or Scheme. To
-find out more about what Python can do for you, point your browser to
-http://www.python.org/.
+Python is an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming
+language suitable (amongst other uses) for distributed application
+development, scripting, numeric computing and system testing. Python
+is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic or
+Scheme. To find out more about what Python can do for you, 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.
+http://docs.python.org/ 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/cgi-bin/moinmoin/PythonBooks for a list.
+www.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
Documentation
@@ -82,16 +82,17 @@
and functions!
All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
-(http://www.python.org/doc/, see below). It is available online for
+(http://docs.python.org/, see below). It is available online for
occasional reference, or can be downloaded in many formats for faster
access. The documentation is available in HTML, PostScript, PDF, and
LaTeX formats; the LaTeX version is primarily for documentation
authors, translators, and people with special formatting requirements.
-The best documentation for the new (in Python 2.2) type/class
-unification features is Guido's tutorial introduction, at
+Unfortunately, new-style classes (new in Python 2.2) have not yet been
+integrated into Python's standard documention. A collection of
+pointers to what has been written is at:
- http://www.python.org/2.2.1/descrintro.html
+ http://www.python.org/doc/newstyle.html
Web sites
@@ -110,12 +111,12 @@
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 http://www.python.org/psa/MailingLists.html for an
-overview of the many Python-related mailing lists.
+mailing lists: see http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for an
+overview of these and many other Python-related mailing lists.
Archives are accessible via the Google Groups usenet archive; see
http://groups.google.com/. The mailing lists are also archived, see
-http://www.python.org/psa/MailingLists.html for details.
+http://www.python.org/community/lists.html for details.
Bug reports
@@ -135,7 +136,7 @@
If you have a proposal to change Python, it's best to submit a Python
Enhancement Proposal (PEP) first. All current PEPs, as well as
guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
-http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
+http://www.python.org/peps/.
Questions
@@ -189,10 +190,9 @@
See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
-If you run into other trouble, see section 3 of the FAQ
-(http://www.python.org/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 run into other trouble, see the FAQ
+(http://www.python.org/doc/faq) 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
@@ -200,8 +200,7 @@
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!
+should be there, inspect the config.log file.
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
@@ -227,8 +226,10 @@
Unsupported systems
-------------------
+XXX This section is out of date!
+
A number of features are not supported in Python 2.3 anymore. Some
-support code is still present, but will be removed in Python 2.4.
+support code is still present, but will be removed in Python 2.4.
If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
please send a message to python-dev at python.org indicating that you
volunteer to support this system.
@@ -263,12 +264,9 @@
bsddb185 bsddbmodule.c
should work. (You may need to add -I, -L or -l flags to direct the
- compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.) You can
- then force it to be the version people import by adding
-
- import bsddb185 as bsddb
+ compiler and linker to your include files and libraries.)
- in sitecustomize.py.
+XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, imageop and rgbimg don't work.
The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
@@ -295,8 +293,8 @@
When the dynamic loader complains about errors finding shared
libraries, such as
- ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
- No such file or directory
+ ld.so.1: ./python: fatal: libstdc++.so.5: open failed:
+ No such file or directory
you need to first make sure that the library is available on
your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
@@ -314,13 +312,9 @@
solves the problem. This causes the popen2 test to fail;
problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
- Under Linux systems using GNU libc 2 (aka libc6), the crypt
- module now needs the -lcrypt option. The setup.py script
- takes care of this automatically.
-
Red Hat Linux: Red Hat 9 built Python2.2 in UCS-4 mode and hacked
Tcl to support it. To compile Python2.3 with Tkinter, you will
- need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
+ need to pass --enable-unicode=ucs4 flag to ./configure.
There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
@@ -367,13 +361,13 @@
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 pyconfig.h defines it. This seems unnecessary when
- using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
+ using HP/UX 11 and later - threading seems to work "out of the
box".
-HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
- compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
- optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
- (see http://www.python.org/sf/814976). To work around this,
+HP-UX ia64: When building on the ia64 (Itanium) platform using HP's
+ compiler, some experience has shown that the compiler's
+ optimiser produces a completely broken version of python
+ (see http://www.python.org/sf/814976). To work around this,
edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
HP PA-RISC 2.0: A recent bug report (http://www.python.org/sf/546117)
@@ -541,7 +535,7 @@
do "sudo make install" which installs everything as superuser,
as this may later cause problems when installing distutils-based
additions.
-
+
Some people have reported problems building Python after using "fink"
to install additional unix software. Disabling fink (remove all references
to /sw from your .profile or .login) should solve this.
@@ -552,7 +546,7 @@
/Library/Frameworks). A framework install is probably needed if you
want to use any Aqua-based GUI toolkit (whether Tkinter, wxPython,
Carbon, Cocoa or anything else).
-
+
See Mac/OSX/README for more information on framework builds.
Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
@@ -767,9 +761,9 @@
---------------------------
Starting with Python 2.3, the majority of the interpreter can be built
-into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
+into a shared library, which can then be used by the interpreter
executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
-configure with --enable-shared.
+configure with --enable-shared.
If you enable this feature, the same object files will be used to create
a static library. In particular, the static library will contain object
@@ -1018,7 +1012,7 @@
--with-pydebug: Enable additional debugging code to help track down
memory management problems. This allows printing a list of all
live objects when the interpreter terminates.
-
+
--with(out)-universal-newlines: enable reading of text files with
foreign newline convention (default: enabled). In other words,
any of \r, \n or \r\n is acceptable as end-of-line character.
@@ -1028,6 +1022,7 @@
--with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
+
Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
-------------------------------------------------------------
@@ -1130,9 +1125,7 @@
For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
-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).
+There are demos in the Demo/tkinter directory.
Note that there's a Python module called "Tkinter" (capital T) which
lives in Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py, and a C module called "_tkinter"
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