build.txt

How to build lxml from source
=============================

To build lxml from source, you need libxml2 and libxslt properly
installed, *including the header files*.  These are likely shipped in
separate ``-dev`` or ``-devel`` packages like ``libxml2-dev``, which
you must install before trying to build lxml.

.. contents::
..
   1  Cython
   2  Github, git and hg
   3  Building the sources
   4  Running the tests and reporting errors
   5  Building an egg
   6  Building lxml on MacOS-X
   7  Static linking on Windows
   8  Building Debian packages from SVN sources


Cython
------

.. _pip: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip
.. _Cython: http://www.cython.org

The lxml.etree and lxml.objectify modules are written in Cython_.
Since we distribute the Cython-generated .c files with lxml releases,
however, you do not need Cython to build lxml from the normal release
sources.  We even encourage you to *not install Cython* for a normal
release build, as the generated C code can vary quite heavily between
Cython versions, which may or may not generate correct code for lxml.
The pre-generated release sources were tested and therefore are known
to work.

So, if you want a reliable build of lxml, we suggest to a) use a
source release of lxml and b) disable or uninstall Cython for the
build.

*Only* if you are interested in building lxml from a checkout of the
developer sources (e.g. to test a bug fix that has not been release
yet) or if you want to be an lxml developer, then you do need a
working Cython installation.  You can use pip_ to install it::

    pip install "Cython>=0.17.1"

lxml currently requires Cython 0.17.1, later release versions should
work as well.


Github, git and hg
-------------------

The lxml package is developed in a repository on Github_ using
Mercurial_ and the `hg-git`_ plugin.  You can retrieve the current
developer version using::

  hg clone git://github.com/lxml/lxml.git lxml

This will create a directory ``lxml`` and download the source into it,
including the complete development history.  Don't be afraid, the
download is fairly quick.  You can also browse the `lxml repository`_
through the web.

.. _Github: https://github.com/lxml/
.. _Mercurial: http://mercurial.selenic.com/
.. _`hg-git`: http://hg-git.github.com/
.. _`lxml repository`: https://github.com/lxml/lxml
.. _`source tar-ball`: https://github.com/lxml/lxml/tarball/master


Building the sources
---------------------

Clone the source repository as described above (or download
the `source tar-ball`_ and unpack it) and then type::

  python setup.py build

or::

  python setup.py bdist_egg     # requires 'setuptools' or 'distribute'

If you want to test lxml from the source directory, it is better to build it
in-place like this::

  python setup.py build_ext -i

or, in Unix-like environments::

  make inplace

If you get errors about missing header files (e.g. ``Python.h`` or
``libxml/xmlversion.h``) then you need to make sure the development
packages of Python, libxml2 and libxslt are properly installed.  On
Linux distributions, they are usually called something like
``libxml2-dev`` or ``libxslt-devel``.  If these packages were
installed in non-standard places, try passing the following option to
setup.py to make sure the right config is found::

  python setup.py build --with-xslt-config=/path/to/xslt-config

If this doesn't help, you may have to add the location of the header
files to the include path like::

  python setup.py build_ext -i  -I /usr/include/libxml2

where the file is in ``/usr/include/libxml2/libxml/xmlversion.h``

To use lxml.etree in-place, you can place lxml's ``src`` directory
on your Python module search path (PYTHONPATH) and then import
``lxml.etree`` to play with it::

  # cd lxml
  # PYTHONPATH=src python
  Python 2.7.2
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  >>> from lxml import etree
  >>>

To make sure everything gets recompiled cleanly after changes, you can
run ``make clean`` or delete the file ``src/lxml/etree.c``.  Distutils
do not automatically pick up changes that affect files other than the
main file ``src/lxml/etree.pyx``.


Running the tests and reporting errors
--------------------------------------

The source distribution (tgz) and the source repository contain a test
suite for lxml.  You can run it from the top-level directory::

  python test.py

Note that the test script only tests the in-place build (see distutils
building above), as it searches the ``src`` directory.  You can use the
following one-step command to trigger an in-place build and test it::

  make test

This also runs the ElementTree and cElementTree compatibility tests.  To call
them separately, make sure you have lxml on your PYTHONPATH first, then run::

  python selftest.py

and::

  python selftest2.py

If the tests give failures, errors, or worse, segmentation faults, we'd really
like to know.  Please contact us on the `mailing list`_, and please specify
the version of lxml, libxml2, libxslt and Python you were using, as well as
your operating system type (Linux, Windows, MacOs, ...).

.. _`mailing list`: http://lxml.de/mailinglist/


Building an egg
---------------

This is the procedure to make an lxml egg for your platform (assuming
that you have "setuptools" or "distribute" installed):

* Download the lxml-x.y.tar.gz release.  This contains the pregenerated C so
  that you can be sure you build exactly from the release sources.  Unpack
  them and cd into the resulting directory.

* python setup.py build

* If you're on a unixy platform, cd into ``build/lib.your.platform`` and strip
  any ``.so`` file you find there.  This reduces the size of the egg
  considerably.

* ``python setup.py bdist_egg``

This will put the egg into the ``dist`` directory.


Building lxml on MacOS-X
------------------------

Apple regularly ships new system releases with horribly outdated
system libraries.  This is specifically the case for libxml2 and
libxslt, where the system provided versions are too old to build lxml.

While the Unix environment in MacOS-X makes it relatively easy to
install Unix/Linux style package management tools and new software, it
actually seems to be hard to get libraries set up for exclusive usage
that MacOS-X ships in an older version.  Alternative distributions
(like macports) install their libraries in addition to the system
libraries, but the compiler and the runtime loader on MacOS still sees
the system libraries before the new libraries.  This can lead to
undebuggable crashes where the newer library seems to be loaded but
the older system library is used.

Apple discourages static building against libraries, which would help
working around this problem.  Apple does not ship static library
binaries with its system and several package management systems follow
this decision.  Therefore, building static binaries requires building
the dependencies first.  The ``setup.py`` script does this
automatically when you call it like this::

  python setup.py build --static-deps

This will download and build the latest versions of libxml2 and
libxslt from the official FTP download site.  If you want to use
specific versions, or want to prevent any online access, you can
download both ``tar.gz`` release files yourself, place them into a
subdirectory ``libs`` in the lxml distribution, and call ``setup.py``
with the desired target versions like this::

  python setup.py build --static-deps \
         --libxml2-version=2.7.3 \
         --libxslt-version=1.1.24 \

  sudo python setup.py install

Instead of ``build``, you can use any target, like ``bdist_egg`` if
you want to use setuptools to build an installable egg.

Note that this also works with pip_.  Since you can't pass
command line options in this case, you have to use an environment
variable instead::

  STATIC_DEPS=true pip install lxml

Some machines may require an additional run with "sudo" to install the
package into the Python package directory::

  STATIC_DEPS=true sudo pip install lxml

The ``STATICBUILD`` environment variable is handled equivalently to
the ``STATIC_DEPS`` variable, but is used by some other extension
packages, too.


Static linking on Windows
-------------------------

Most operating systems have proper package management that makes installing
current versions of libxml2 and libxslt easy.  The most famous exception is
Microsoft Windows, which entirely lacks these capabilities.  It can therefore
be interesting to statically link the external libraries into lxml.etree to
avoid having to install them separately.

Download lxml and all required libraries to the same directory.  The iconv,
libxml2, libxslt, and zlib libraries are all available from the ftp site
ftp://ftp.zlatkovic.com/pub/libxml/.

Your directory should now have the following files in it (although most likely
different versions)::

  iconv-1.9.1.win32.zip
  libxml2-2.6.23.win32.zip
  libxslt-1.1.15.win32.zip
  lxml-1.0.0.tgz
  zlib-1.2.3.win32.zip

Now extract each of those files in the *same* directory.  This should give you
something like this::

  iconv-1.9.1.win32/
  iconv-1.9.1.win32.zip
  libxml2-2.6.23.win32/
  libxml2-2.6.23.win32.zip
  libxslt-1.1.15.win32/
  libxslt-1.1.15.win32.zip
  lxml-1.0.0/
  lxml-1.0.0.tgz
  zlib-1.2.3.win32/
  zlib-1.2.3.win32.zip

Go to the lxml directory and edit the file ``setup.py``.  There should
be a section near the top that looks like this::

  STATIC_INCLUDE_DIRS = []
  STATIC_LIBRARY_DIRS = []
  STATIC_CFLAGS = []

Change this section to something like this, but take care to use the correct
version numbers::

  STATIC_INCLUDE_DIRS = [
         "..\\libxml2-2.6.23.win32\\include",
         "..\\libxslt-1.1.15.win32\\include",
         "..\\zlib-1.2.3.win32\\include",
         "..\\iconv-1.9.1.win32\\include"
         ]

  STATIC_LIBRARY_DIRS = [
         "..\\libxml2-2.6.23.win32\\lib",
         "..\\libxslt-1.1.15.win32\\lib",
         "..\\zlib-1.2.3.win32\\lib",
         "..\\iconv-1.9.1.win32\\lib"
         ]

  STATIC_CFLAGS = []

Add any CFLAGS you might consider useful to the third list.  Now you
should be able to pass the ``--static`` option to setup.py and
everything should work well.  Try calling::

  python setup.py bdist_wininst --static

This will create a windows installer in the ``pkg`` directory.


Building Debian packages from SVN sources
-----------------------------------------

`Andreas Pakulat`_ proposed the following approach.

.. _`Andreas Pakulat`: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.lxml.devel/1239/focus=1249

* ``apt-get source lxml``
* remove the unpacked directory
* tar.gz the lxml SVN version and replace the orig.tar.gz that lies in the
  directory
* check md5sum of created tar.gz file and place new sum and size in dsc file
* do ``dpkg-source -x lxml-[VERSION].dsc`` and cd into the newly created directory
* run ``dch -i`` and add a comment like "use trunk version", this will
  increase the debian version number so apt/dpkg won't get confused
* run ``dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc`` to build the package

In case ``dpkg-buildpackage`` tells you that some dependecies are missing, you
can either install them manually or run ``apt-get build-dep lxml``.

That will give you .deb packages in the parent directory which can be
installed using ``dpkg -i``.