collective / buildout.python

Buildout all the Pythons

Introduction

This buildout is a collection of configurations to make it easy to compile various Python versions with or without the necessary dependencies.

The default buildout.cfg configuration is for Mac OS X Leopard, because that's what this buildout was initially created for.

The default configuration is optimized for production builds, trading in an increase in build time for a faster Python executable. See the compilation options sections below on how to change this.

Installation

See docs/INSTALL.rst

Upgrade

See docs/UPGRADE.rst

Advanced Usage

The buildout is split up to make it easy to mix and match the parts you need.

If the links.cfg is used, then a script install-links is created in the bin directory. That script makes it easy to create symbolic links to all the binaries and scripts in this buildout. You should set the destination for those links by creating a local.cfg with the following content and run it with bin/buildout -c local.cfg after modifying the prefix setting to your needs:

[buildout]
extends = buildout.cfg

[install-links]
prefix = /path/for/the/links

The buildout is built in a way that you can easily extend it with your own configuration.

Just get a Git clone:

git clone git://github.com/collective/buildout.python.git python

And use a custom buildout.cfg like this:

[buildout]
extends = python/src/base.cfg python/src/python27.cfg
python-buildout-root = ${buildout:directory}/python/src

If you want just one python version but all dependencies, then use something like this:

[buildout]
extends =
  src/base.cfg
  src/readline.cfg
  src/zlib.cfg
  src/python25.cfg
  src/links.cfg

python-buildout-root = ${buildout:directory}/src

parts =
    ${buildout:base-parts}
    ${buildout:readline-parts}
    ${buildout:zlib-parts}
    ${buildout:python25-parts}
    ${buildout:links-parts}

The python-buildout-root setting is important, otherwise the whole buildout doesn't work.

Compilation Options

Create a local.cfg file to customise what is built or alter configuration. You can use this limit what versions are built, or to configure where to find libraries and header files.

Start the file with:

[buildout]
extends = buildout.cfg

and you can then run buildout with:

$ ./bin/buildout -c local.cfg

to use this adjusted configuration.

To limit what Python versions are built, re-define the buildout.parts variable, found in buildout.cfg:

# build Python versions 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9
parts =
    ${buildout:base-parts}
    ${buildout:readline-parts}
    ${buildout:zlib-parts}
    ${buildout:python37-parts}
    ${buildout:python38-parts}
    ${buildout:python39-parts}
    ${buildout:links-parts}

You can set additional environment variables or configure switches for all Python builds by extending the python-build:default.extra_options and python-build:default.environment options. Setting the optimizations option to an empty value disables the Profile-Guided optimization compilation option for modern Python versions:

[python-build:default]
optimizations =
environment +=
    SOMEVARIABLE=somevalue
extra_opts +=
    --some-supported-option

If you are installing Python 3.6, and if you are on a newer version of Mac OS, you could link against a SQLite library installed via Homebrew, and enable the loadable-sqlite-extensions option, via the [python-build:darwin] section:

[python-build:darwin]
shellvars +=
    sqlite = brew --prefix sqlite
extra_opts +=
    --with-loadable-sqlite-extensions
environment =
    LDFLAGS=-L${:openssl}/lib -L${:sqlite}/lib
    CPPFLAGS=-I${:openssl}/include -I${:sqlite/include}

Refer to the buildout.cfg and src/*.cfg files for further definitions you may want to override.