wxPythonOSX building from source

Why build from source?

It is important for software developers to know how to build things from source code. If you find a bug and need to use a bleeding edge version of something, it is helpful to be able to do so. In addition, by using source code and contributing your experiences back to the project, everyone wins.

I started this page because I found the other two installation pages (BUILD and INSTALL quite confusing and incomplete. Especially for MacOSX users.

I want to build my own for the following reasons:

1. The only wxPython binaries available are for Python 2.3.
2. OSX 10.3 comes with Python 2.3. I want to use Python 2.4.
3. OSX 10.3 Python 2.3 does not support Unicode and I want that enabled.
4. The software releases I'm trying to use are not even beta software, but actual latest releases.

The instructions below will result in a working installation of Python 2.4 and wxPython 2.5.3.1.

Jon Scott Stevens jon N O S P A M latchkey.com

My Setup

My setup works like this:

I have a directory /usr/local/src/python where I have put all the Python related things that I want to build. There is no requirement to have things built in this location, but it is easiest for me to do it this way.

[ /usr/local/src/python ]# ls -la
total 26188
    0 drwxrwxr-x   14 root     wheel         476 Jan 19 17:01 ./
    0 drwxrwxr-x   20 root     wheel         680 Jan 19 08:28 ../
    0 drwxr-xr-x   39 179      666          1326 Jan 19 17:00 Python-2.4/
 8984 -rw-rw-r--    1 root     wheel     9198035 Nov 29 19:27 Python-2.4.tgz
    4 -rw-rw-r--    1 root     wheel         109 Jan 19 17:00 build-python.sh
    4 -rw-rw-r--    1 root     wheel         521 Jan 19 16:58 build-wxPython.sh
    0 drwxr-xr-x   16 jon      wheel         544 Jan 19 09:28 waste/
    0 drwxr-xr-x   41 jon      jon          1394 Jan 19 15:21 wxPython-src-2.5.3.1/
15536 -rw-rw-r--    1 root     wheel    15906505 Nov  9 18:34 wxPython-src-2.5.3.1.tar.gz

In order to build Python 2.4 properly, I need to first download Python 2.4 from http://python.org and I also need to download the waste text editor engine from http://www.merzwaren.com . As instructed in Python-2.4/Mac/OSX/README, I renamed the WASTE engine directory to waste. You will also need to run ranlib on the waste/Static Libraries/libWASTE.a

[ /usr/local/src/python ]# ranlib "waste/Static Libraries/libWASTE.a"

Please note: If you are installing things this way, there is also no need to download the MacPython 2.3 distribution. This will build and install it for you in /Applications/MacPython2.4.

I then created a script called build-python.sh and executed it from the command line while in the /usr/local/src/python directory...

[ /usr/local/src/python ]# cat build-python.sh
#!/bin/sh

DIR=Python-2.4

cd $DIR
./configure \
        --enable-framework \
        --enable-unicode

make
make install

That should build and install Python in /usr/local/bin and /Library/Frameworks/Python.Framework. As noted above, it also installs useful stuff in /Applications/MacPython2.4.

Next, I wanted to add wxPython to my machine. One confusing aspect of all of the other documentation that I have read is that the wxPython source distribution also includes a copy of wxWidgets. There is no need to download and install them separately!

This is my build script for wxWidgets/wxPython...I'm installing wxWidgets into /usr/local/wx. wxPython will get installed into your the previously mentioned directory as well as your Python site-packages directory, which if you have installed Python 2.4 according to the instructions above will be at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages.

[193][ /usr/local/src/python ]# more build-wxPython.sh 
#!/bin/sh

VER=2.5.3.1
DIR=wxPython-src-$VER
BUILD=$DIR/bld
PREFIX=/usr/local/wx
WX_CONFIG=${PREFIX}/${VER}/bin/wx-config
UNICODE=1
GLCANVAS=0

mkdir -p $BUILD
cd $BUILD

../configure \
        --prefix=${PREFIX}/${VER} \
        --with-mac \
        --enable-optimize \
        --enable-unicode \
        --enable-monolithic \
        --with-libjpeg=builtin \
        --with-libpng=builtin \
        --with-libtiff=builtin \
        --with-zlib=builtin \
        --with-opengl \
        --enable-geometry \
        --enable-sound --with-sdl \
        --enable-display

make install
make -C contrib/src/gizmos install
make -C contrib/src/ogl CXXFLAGS="-DwxUSE_DEPRECATED=0" install
make -C contrib/src/stc install

cd ../wxPython

python setup.py install \
        UNICODE=${UNICODE} \
        WX_CONFIG=${WX_CONFIG} \
        BUILD_GLCANVAS=${GLCANVAS}

Now, this will take a while to build and install everything (on my g4 500mhz box, it takes around an hour!), but after that you should have a working wxPython/wxWidgets installation. If you want to test things out, try running the wxPython demo application.

cd /usr/local/src/python/wxPython-src-2.5.3.1/wxPython/demo
pythonw demo.py