symbian-qemu-0.9.1-12/python-2.6.1/README
changeset 1 2fb8b9db1c86
--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/symbian-qemu-0.9.1-12/python-2.6.1/README	Fri Jul 31 15:01:17 2009 +0100
@@ -0,0 +1,1321 @@
+This is Python version 2.6.1
+============================
+
+Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
+Python Software Foundation.
+All rights reserved.
+
+Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com.
+All rights reserved.
+
+Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
+All rights reserved.
+
+Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum.
+All rights reserved.
+
+
+License information
+-------------------
+
+See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this
+software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL
+WARRANTIES.
+
+This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public Licensed
+(GPLed) code so it may be used in proprietary projects just like prior
+Python distributions.  There are interfaces to some GNU code but these
+are entirely optional.
+
+All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective
+holders.
+
+
+What's new in this release?
+---------------------------
+
+See the file "Misc/NEWS".
+
+
+If you don't read instructions
+------------------------------
+
+Congratulations on getting this far. :-)
+
+To start building right away (on UNIX): type "./configure" in the
+current directory and when it finishes, type "make".  This creates an
+executable "./python"; to install in /usr/local, first do "su root"
+and then "make install".
+
+The section `Build instructions' below is still recommended reading.
+
+
+What is Python anyway?
+----------------------
+
+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://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://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks for a list.
+
+
+Documentation
+-------------
+
+All documentation is provided online in a variety of formats.  In
+order of importance for new users: Tutorial, Library Reference,
+Language Reference, Extending & Embedding, and the Python/C API.  The
+Library Reference is especially of immense value since much of
+Python's power is described there, including the built-in data types
+and functions!
+
+All documentation is also available online at the Python web site
+(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 downloadable in HTML, PostScript, PDF, LaTeX, and
+reStructuredText (2.6+) formats; the LaTeX and reStructuredText versions are
+primarily for documentation authors, translators, and people with special
+formatting requirements.
+
+
+Web sites
+---------
+
+New Python releases and related technologies are published at
+http://www.python.org/.  Come visit us!
+
+There's also a Python community web site at
+http://starship.python.net/.
+
+
+Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
+----------------------------
+
+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/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/community/lists.html for details.
+
+
+Bug reports
+-----------
+
+To report or search for bugs, please use the Python Bug
+Tracker at http://bugs.python.org.
+
+
+Patches and contributions
+-------------------------
+
+To submit a patch or other contribution, please use the Python Patch
+Manager at http://bugs.python.org.  Guidelines
+for patch submission may be found at http://www.python.org/dev/patches/.
+
+If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
+comp.lang.python or python-ideas mailing lists for inital feedback. A Python
+Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground. All
+current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
+http://www.python.org/dev/peps/.
+
+
+Questions
+---------
+
+For help, if you can't find it in the manuals or on the web site, it's
+best to post to the comp.lang.python or the Python mailing list (see
+above).  If you specifically don't want to involve the newsgroup or
+mailing list, send questions to help@python.org (a group of volunteers
+who answer questions as they can).  The newsgroup is the most
+efficient way to ask public questions.
+
+
+Build instructions
+==================
+
+Before you can build Python, you must first configure it.
+Fortunately, the configuration and build process has been automated
+for Unix and Linux installations, so all you usually have to do is
+type a few commands and sit back.  There are some platforms where
+things are not quite as smooth; see the platform specific notes below.
+If you want to build for multiple platforms sharing the same source
+tree, see the section on VPATH below.
+
+Start by running the script "./configure", which determines your
+system configuration and creates the Makefile.  (It takes a minute or
+two -- please be patient!)  You may want to pass options to the
+configure script -- see the section below on configuration options and
+variables.  When it's done, you are ready to run make.
+
+To build Python, you normally type "make" in the toplevel directory.
+If you have changed the configuration, the Makefile may have to be
+rebuilt.  In this case you may have to run make again to correctly
+build your desired target.  The interpreter executable is built in the
+top level directory.
+
+Once you have built a Python interpreter, see the subsections below on
+testing and installation.  If you run into trouble, see the next
+section.
+
+Previous versions of Python used a manual configuration process that
+involved editing the file Modules/Setup.  While this file still exists
+and manual configuration is still supported, it is rarely needed any
+more: almost all modules are automatically built as appropriate under
+guidance of the setup.py script, which is run by Make after the
+interpreter has been built.
+
+
+Troubleshooting
+---------------
+
+See also the platform specific notes in the next section.
+
+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
+not, "make clean" sometimes helps to clean up other inexplicable
+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.
+
+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
+whether this option is needed; all we can do is test whether it is
+accepted without error.  On some systems, e.g. older SGI compilers, it
+is essential for performance (specifically when compiling ceval.c,
+which has more basic blocks than the default limit of 1000).  If the
+warning bothers you, edit the Makefile to remove "-Olimit 1500" from
+the OPT variable.
+
+If you get failures in test_long, or sys.maxint gets set to -1, you
+are probably experiencing compiler bugs, usually related to
+optimization.  This is a common problem with some versions of gcc, and
+some vendor-supplied compilers, which can sometimes be worked around
+by turning off optimization.  Consider switching to stable versions
+(gcc 2.95.2, gcc 3.x, or contact your vendor.)
+
+From Python 2.0 onward, all Python C code is ANSI C.  Compiling using
+old K&R-C-only compilers is no longer possible.  ANSI C compilers are
+available for all modern systems, either in the form of updated
+compilers from the vendor, or one of the free compilers (gcc).
+
+If "make install" fails mysteriously during the "compiling the library"
+step, make sure that you don't have any of the PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME
+environment variables set, as they may interfere with the newly built
+executable which is compiling the library.
+
+Unsupported systems
+-------------------
+
+A number of features are not supported in Python 2.5 anymore. Some
+support code is still present, but will be removed in Python 2.6. 
+If you still need to use current Python versions on these systems,
+please send a message to python-dev@python.org indicating that you
+volunteer to support this system. For a more detailed discussion 
+regarding no-longer-supported and resupporting platforms, as well
+as a list of platforms that became or will be unsupported, see PEP 11.
+
+More specifically, the following systems are not supported any
+longer:
+- SunOS 4
+- DYNIX
+- dgux
+- Minix
+- NeXT
+- Irix 4 and --with-sgi-dl
+- Linux 1
+- Systems defining __d6_pthread_create (configure.in)
+- Systems defining PY_PTHREAD_D4, PY_PTHREAD_D6,
+  or PY_PTHREAD_D7 in thread_pthread.h
+- Systems using --with-dl-dld
+- Systems using --without-universal-newlines
+- MacOS 9
+
+The following systems are still supported in Python 2.5, but
+support will be dropped in 2.6:
+- Systems using --with-wctype-functions
+- Win9x, WinME
+
+Warning on install in Windows 98 and Windows Me
+-----------------------------------------------
+
+Following Microsoft's closing of Extended Support for
+Windows 98/ME (July 11, 2006), Python 2.6 will stop
+supporting these platforms. Python development and
+maintainability becomes easier (and more reliable) when
+platform specific code targeting OSes with few users
+and no dedicated expert developers is taken out. The
+vendor also warns that the OS versions listed above
+"can expose customers to security risks" and recommends
+upgrade.
+
+Platform specific notes
+-----------------------
+
+(Some of these may no longer apply.  If you find you can build Python
+on these platforms without the special directions mentioned here,
+submit a documentation bug report to SourceForge (see Bug Reports
+above) so we can remove them!)
+
+Unix platforms: If your vendor still ships (and you still use) Berkeley DB
+        1.85 you will need to edit Modules/Setup to build the bsddb185
+        module and add a line to sitecustomize.py which makes it the
+        default.  In Modules/Setup a line like
+
+            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.)
+
+XXX I think this next bit is out of date:
+
+64-bit platforms: The modules audioop, and imageop don't work.
+        The setup.py script disables them on 64-bit installations.
+        Don't try to enable them in the Modules/Setup file.  They
+        contain code that is quite wordsize sensitive.  (If you have a
+        fix, let us know!)
+
+Solaris: When using Sun's C compiler with threads, at least on Solaris
+        2.5.1, you need to add the "-mt" compiler option (the simplest
+        way is probably to specify the compiler with this option as
+        the "CC" environment variable when running the configure
+        script).
+
+        When using GCC on Solaris, beware of binutils 2.13 or GCC
+        versions built using it.  This mistakenly enables the
+        -zcombreloc option which creates broken shared libraries on
+        Solaris.  binutils 2.12 works, and the binutils maintainers
+        are aware of the problem.  Binutils 2.13.1 only partially
+        fixed things.  It appears that 2.13.2 solves the problem
+        completely.  This problem is known to occur with Solaris 2.7
+        and 2.8, but may also affect earlier and later versions of the
+        OS.
+
+        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
+
+        you need to first make sure that the library is available on
+        your system. Then, you need to instruct the dynamic loader how
+        to find it. You can choose any of the following strategies:
+
+        1. When compiling Python, set LD_RUN_PATH to the directories
+           containing missing libraries.
+        2. When running Python, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to these directories.
+        3. Use crle(8) to extend the search path of the loader.
+        4. Modify the installed GCC specs file, adding -R options into the
+           *link: section.
+
+        The complex object fails to compile on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4 (at
+        least up to 3.4.3).  To work around it, define Py_HUGE_VAL as
+        HUGE_VAL(), e.g.:
+
+          make CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()" -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include'
+          ./python setup.py CPPFLAGS='-D"Py_HUGE_VAL=HUGE_VAL()"'
+
+Linux:  A problem with threads and fork() was tracked down to a bug in
+        the pthreads code in glibc version 2.0.5; glibc version 2.0.7
+        solves the problem.  This causes the popen2 test to fail;
+        problem and solution reported by Pablo Bleyer.
+
+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.
+
+        There's an executable /usr/bin/python which is Python
+        1.5.2 on most older Red Hat installations; several key Red Hat tools
+        require this version.  Python 2.1.x may be installed as
+        /usr/bin/python2.  The Makefile installs Python as
+        /usr/local/bin/python, which may or may not take precedence
+        over /usr/bin/python, depending on how you have set up $PATH.
+
+FreeBSD 3.x and probably platforms with NCurses that use libmytinfo or
+        similar: When using cursesmodule, the linking is not done in
+        the correct order with the defaults.  Remove "-ltermcap" from
+        the readline entry in Setup, and use as curses entry: "curses
+        cursesmodule.c -lmytinfo -lncurses -ltermcap" - "mytinfo" (so
+        called on FreeBSD) should be the name of the auxiliary library
+        required on your platform.  Normally, it would be linked
+        automatically, but not necessarily in the correct order.
+
+BSDI:   BSDI versions before 4.1 have known problems with threads,
+        which can cause strange errors in a number of modules (for
+        instance, the 'test_signal' test script will hang forever.)
+        Turning off threads (with --with-threads=no) or upgrading to
+        BSDI 4.1 solves this problem.
+
+DEC Unix: Run configure with --with-dec-threads, or with
+        --with-threads=no if no threads are desired (threads are on by
+        default).  When using GCC, it is possible to get an internal
+        compiler error if optimization is used.  This was reported for
+        GCC 2.7.2.3 on selectmodule.c.  Manually compile the affected
+        file without optimization to solve the problem.
+
+DEC Ultrix: compile with GCC to avoid bugs in the native compiler,
+        and pass SHELL=/bin/sh5 to Make when installing.
+
+AIX:    A complete overhaul of the shared library support is now in
+        place.  See Misc/AIX-NOTES for some notes on how it's done.
+        (The optimizer bug reported at this place in previous releases
+        has been worked around by a minimal code change.) If you get
+        errors about pthread_* functions, during compile or during
+        testing, try setting CC to a thread-safe (reentrant) compiler,
+        like "cc_r".  For full C++ module support, set CC="xlC_r" (or
+        CC="xlC" without thread support).
+
+AIX 5.3: To build a 64-bit version with IBM's compiler, I used the
+        following:
+
+        export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/vacpp/bin
+        ./configure --with-gcc="xlc_r -q64" --with-cxx="xlC_r -q64" \
+                    --disable-ipv6 AR="ar -X64"
+        make
+
+HP-UX:  When using threading, you may have to add -D_REENTRANT to the
+        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
+        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,
+        edit the Makefile and remove -O from the OPT line.
+
+        To build a 64-bit executable on an Itanium 2 system using HP's
+        compiler, use these environment variables:
+
+                CC=cc
+                CXX=aCC
+                BASECFLAGS="+DD64"
+                LDFLAGS="+DD64 -lxnet"
+
+        and call configure as:
+
+                ./configure --without-gcc
+
+        then *unset* the environment variables again before running
+        make.  (At least one of these flags causes the build to fail
+        if it remains set.)  You still have to 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)
+        suggests that the C compiler in this 64-bit system has bugs
+        in the optimizer that break Python.  Compiling without
+        optimization solves the problems.
+
+SCO:    The following apply to SCO 3 only; Python builds out of the box
+        on SCO 5 (or so we've heard).
+
+        1) Everything works much better if you add -U__STDC__ to the
+        defs.  This is because all the SCO header files are broken.
+        Anything that isn't mentioned in the C standard is
+        conditionally excluded when __STDC__ is defined.
+
+        2) Due to the U.S. export restrictions, SCO broke the crypt
+        stuff out into a separate library, libcrypt_i.a so the LIBS
+        needed be set to:
+
+                LIBS=' -lsocket -lcrypt_i'
+
+UnixWare: There are known bugs in the math library of the system, as well as
+        problems in the handling of threads (calling fork in one
+        thread may interrupt system calls in others). Therefore, test_math and
+        tests involving threads will fail until those problems are fixed.
+
+QNX:    Chris Herborth (chrish@qnx.com) writes:
+        configure works best if you use GNU bash; a port is available on
+        ftp.qnx.com in /usr/free.  I used the following process to build,
+        test and install Python 1.5.x under QNX:
+
+        1) CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash CC=cc RANLIB=: \
+            ./configure --verbose --without-gcc --with-libm=""
+
+        2) edit Modules/Setup to activate everything that makes sense for
+           your system... tested here at QNX with the following modules:
+
+                array, audioop, binascii, cPickle, cStringIO, cmath,
+                crypt, curses, errno, fcntl, gdbm, grp, imageop,
+                _locale, math, md5, new, operator, parser, pcre,
+                posix, pwd, readline, regex, reop,
+                select, signal, socket, soundex, strop, struct,
+                syslog, termios, time, timing, zlib, audioop, imageop
+
+        3) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
+
+           or, if you feel the need for speed:
+
+           make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash OPT="-5 -Oil+nrt"
+
+        4) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash test
+
+           Using GNU readline 2.2 seems to behave strangely, but I
+           think that's a problem with my readline 2.2 port.  :-\
+
+        5) make SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash install
+
+        If you get SIGSEGVs while running Python (I haven't yet, but
+        I've only run small programs and the test cases), you're
+        probably running out of stack; the default 32k could be a
+        little tight.  To increase the stack size, edit the Makefile
+        to read: LDFLAGS = -N 48k
+
+BeOS:   See Misc/BeOS-NOTES for notes about compiling/installing
+        Python on BeOS R3 or later.  Note that only the PowerPC
+        platform is supported for R3; both PowerPC and x86 are
+        supported for R4.
+
+Cray T3E: Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz) writes:
+        Python can be built satisfactorily on a Cray T3E but based on
+        my experience with the NIWA T3E (2002-05-22, version 2.2.1)
+        there are a few bugs and gotchas. For more information see a
+        thread on comp.lang.python in May 2002 entitled "Building
+        Python on Cray T3E".
+
+        1) Use Cray's cc and not gcc. The latter was reported not to
+           work by Konrad Hinsen. It may work now, but it may not.
+
+        2) To set sys.platform to something sensible, pass the
+           following environment variable to the configure script:
+
+             MACHDEP=unicosmk
+
+        2) Run configure with option "--enable-unicode=ucs4".
+
+        3) The Cray T3E does not support dynamic linking, so extension
+           modules have to be built by adding (or uncommenting) lines
+           in Modules/Setup. The minimum set of modules is
+
+             posix, new, _sre, unicodedata
+
+           On NIWA's vanilla T3E system the following have also been
+           included successfully:
+
+             _codecs, _locale, _socket, _symtable, _testcapi, _weakref
+             array, binascii, cmath, cPickle, crypt, cStringIO, dbm
+             errno, fcntl, grp, math, md5, operator, parser, pcre, pwd
+             regex, rotor, select, struct, strop, syslog, termios
+             time, timing, xreadlines
+
+        4) Once the python executable and library have been built, make
+           will execute setup.py, which will attempt to build remaining
+           extensions and link them dynamically. Each of these attempts
+           will fail but should not halt the make process. This is
+           normal.
+
+        5) Running "make test" uses a lot of resources and causes
+           problems on our system. You might want to try running tests
+           singly or in small groups.
+
+SGI:    SGI's standard "make" utility (/bin/make or /usr/bin/make)
+        does not check whether a command actually changed the file it
+        is supposed to build.  This means that whenever you say "make"
+        it will redo the link step.  The remedy is to use SGI's much
+        smarter "smake" utility (/usr/sbin/smake), or GNU make.  If
+        you set the first line of the Makefile to #!/usr/sbin/smake
+        smake will be invoked by make (likewise for GNU make).
+
+        WARNING: There are bugs in the optimizer of some versions of
+        SGI's compilers that can cause bus errors or other strange
+        behavior, especially on numerical operations.  To avoid this,
+        try building with "make OPT=".
+
+OS/2:   If you are running Warp3 or Warp4 and have IBM's VisualAge C/C++
+        compiler installed, just change into the pc\os2vacpp directory
+        and type NMAKE.  Threading and sockets are supported by default
+        in the resulting binaries of PYTHON15.DLL and PYTHON.EXE.
+
+Monterey (64-bit AIX): The current Monterey C compiler (Visual Age)
+        uses the OBJECT_MODE={32|64} environment variable to set the
+        compilation mode to either 32-bit or 64-bit (32-bit mode is
+        the default).  Presumably you want 64-bit compilation mode for
+        this 64-bit OS.  As a result you must first set OBJECT_MODE=64
+        in your environment before configuring (./configure) or
+        building (make) Python on Monterey.
+
+Reliant UNIX: The thread support does not compile on Reliant UNIX, and
+        there is a (minor) problem in the configure script for that
+        platform as well.  This should be resolved in time for a
+        future release.
+
+MacOSX: The tests will crash on both 10.1 and 10.2 with SEGV in
+        test_re and test_sre due to the small default stack size.  If
+        you set the stack size to 2048 before doing a "make test" the
+        failure can be avoided.  If you're using the tcsh or csh shells,
+        use "limit stacksize 2048" and for the bash shell (the default
+        as of OSX 10.3), use "ulimit -s 2048".
+
+        On naked Darwin you may want to add the configure option
+        "--disable-toolbox-glue" to disable the glue code for the Carbon
+        interface modules. The modules themselves are currently only built
+        if you add the --enable-framework option, see below.
+
+        On a clean OSX /usr/local does not exist. Do a
+        "sudo mkdir -m 775 /usr/local"
+        before you do a make install. It is probably not a good idea to
+        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.
+
+        You may want to try the configure option "--enable-framework"
+        which installs Python as a framework. The location can be set
+        as argument to the --enable-framework option (default
+        /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).
+
+        You may also want to try the configure option "--enable-universalsdk"
+        which builds Python as a universal binary with support for the 
+        i386 and PPC architetures. This requires Xcode 2.1 or later to build.
+
+        See Mac/README for more information on framework and 
+        universal builds.
+
+Cygwin: With recent (relative to the time of writing, 2001-12-19)
+        Cygwin installations, there are problems with the interaction
+        of dynamic linking and fork().  This manifests itself in build
+        failures during the execution of setup.py.
+
+        There are two workarounds that both enable Python (albeit
+        without threading support) to build and pass all tests on
+        NT/2000 (and most likely XP as well, though reports of testing
+        on XP would be appreciated).
+
+        The workarounds:
+
+        (a) the band-aid fix is to link the _socket module statically
+        rather than dynamically (which is the default).
+
+        To do this, run "./configure --with-threads=no" including any
+        other options you need (--prefix, etc.).  Then in Modules/Setup
+        uncomment the lines:
+
+        #SSL=/usr/local/ssl
+        #_socket socketmodule.c \
+        #       -DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
+        #       -L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto
+
+        and remove "local/" from the SSL variable.  Finally, just run
+        "make"!
+
+        (b) The "proper" fix is to rebase the Cygwin DLLs to prevent
+        base address conflicts.  Details on how to do this can be
+        found in the following mail:
+
+           http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
+
+        It is hoped that a version of this solution will be
+        incorporated into the Cygwin distribution fairly soon.
+
+        Two additional problems:
+
+        (1) Threading support should still be disabled due to a known
+        bug in Cygwin pthreads that causes test_threadedtempfile to
+        hang.
+
+        (2) The _curses module does not build.  This is a known
+        Cygwin ncurses problem that should be resolved the next time
+        that this package is released.
+
+        On older versions of Cygwin, test_poll may hang and test_strftime
+        may fail.
+
+        The situation on 9X/Me is not accurately known at present.
+        Some time ago, there were reports that the following
+        regression tests failed:
+
+            test_pwd
+            test_select (hang)
+            test_socket
+
+        Due to the test_select hang on 9X/Me, one should run the
+        regression test using the following:
+
+            make TESTOPTS='-l -x test_select' test
+
+        News regarding these platforms with more recent Cygwin
+        versions would be appreciated!
+
+AtheOS: Official support has been stopped as of Python 2.6.  All code will be
+        removed in Python 2.7 unless a maintainer steps forward for this
+        platform.
+
+        From Octavian Cerna <tavy at ylabs.com>:
+
+        Before building:
+
+            Make sure you have shared versions of the libraries you
+            want to use with Python. You will have to compile them
+            yourself, or download precompiled packages.
+
+            Recommended libraries:
+
+                ncurses-4.2
+                readline-4.2a
+                zlib-1.1.4
+
+        Build:
+
+            $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/python
+            $ make
+
+            Python is always built as a shared library, otherwise
+            dynamic loading would not work.
+
+        Testing:
+
+            $ make test
+
+        Install:
+
+            # make install
+            # pkgmanager -a /usr/python
+
+
+        AtheOS issues:
+
+            - large file support: due to a stdio bug in glibc/libio,
+              access to large files may not work correctly.  fseeko()
+              tries to seek to a negative offset.  ftello() returns a
+              negative offset, it looks like a 32->64bit
+              sign-extension issue.  The lowlevel functions (open,
+              lseek, etc) are OK.
+            - sockets: AF_UNIX is defined in the C library and in
+              Python, but not implemented in the system.
+            - select: poll is available in the C library, but does not
+              work (It does not return POLLNVAL for bad fds and
+              hangs).
+            - posix: statvfs and fstatvfs always return ENOSYS.
+            - disabled modules:
+                - mmap: not yet implemented in AtheOS
+                - nis: broken (on an unconfigured system
+                  yp_get_default_domain() returns junk instead of
+                  error)
+                - dl: dynamic loading doesn't work via dlopen()
+                - resource: getrimit and setrlimit are not yet
+                  implemented
+
+            - if you are getting segmentation faults, you probably are
+              low on memory.  AtheOS doesn't handle very well an
+              out-of-memory condition and simply SEGVs the process.
+
+        Tested on:
+
+            AtheOS-0.3.7
+            gcc-2.95
+            binutils-2.10
+            make-3.78
+
+
+Configuring the bsddb and dbm modules
+-------------------------------------
+
+Beginning with Python version 2.3, the PyBsddb package
+<http://pybsddb.sf.net/> was adopted into Python as the bsddb package,
+exposing a set of package-level functions which provide
+backwards-compatible behavior.  Only versions 3.3 through 4.4 of
+Sleepycat's libraries provide the necessary API, so older versions
+aren't supported through this interface.  The old bsddb module has
+been retained as bsddb185, though it is not built by default.  Users
+wishing to use it will have to tweak Modules/Setup to build it.  The
+dbm module will still be built against the Sleepycat libraries if
+other preferred alternatives (ndbm, gdbm) are not found.
+
+Building the sqlite3 module
+---------------------------
+
+To build the sqlite3 module, you'll need the sqlite3 or libsqlite3
+packages installed, including the header files. Many modern operating
+systems distribute the headers in a separate package to the library -
+often it will be the same name as the main package, but with a -dev or
+-devel suffix. 
+
+The version of pysqlite2 that's including in Python needs sqlite3 3.0.8
+or later. setup.py attempts to check that it can find a correct version.
+
+Configuring threads
+-------------------
+
+As of Python 2.0, threads are enabled by default.  If you wish to
+compile without threads, or if your thread support is broken, pass the
+--with-threads=no switch to configure.  Unfortunately, on some
+platforms, additional compiler and/or linker options are required for
+threads to work properly.  Below is a table of those options,
+collected by Bill Janssen.  We would love to automate this process
+more, but the information below is not enough to write a patch for the
+configure.in file, so manual intervention is required.  If you patch
+the configure.in file and are confident that the patch works, please
+send in the patch.  (Don't bother patching the configure script itself
+-- it is regenerated each time the configure.in file changes.)
+
+Compiler switches for threads
+.............................
+
+The definition of _REENTRANT should be configured automatically, if
+that does not work on your system, or if _REENTRANT is defined
+incorrectly, please report that as a bug.
+
+    OS/Compiler/threads                     Switches for use with threads
+    (POSIX is draft 10, DCE is draft 4)     compile & link
+
+    SunOS 5.{1-5}/{gcc,SunPro cc}/solaris   -mt
+    SunOS 5.5/{gcc,SunPro cc}/POSIX         (nothing)
+    DEC OSF/1 3.x/cc/DCE                    -threads
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/DCE                 -threads
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    Digital UNIX 4.x/cc/POSIX               -pthread
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    AIX 4.1.4/cc_r/d7                       (nothing)
+            (buhrt@iquest.net)
+    AIX 4.1.4/cc_r4/DCE                     (nothing)
+            (buhrt@iquest.net)
+    IRIX 6.2/cc/POSIX                       (nothing)
+            (robertl@cwi.nl)
+
+
+Linker (ld) libraries and flags for threads
+...........................................
+
+    OS/threads                          Libraries/switches for use with threads
+
+    SunOS 5.{1-5}/solaris               -lthread
+    SunOS 5.5/POSIX                     -lpthread
+    DEC OSF/1 3.x/DCE                   -lpthreads -lmach -lc_r -lc
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    Digital UNIX 4.x/DCE                -lpthreads -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    Digital UNIX 4.x/POSIX              -lpthread -lmach -lexc -lc
+            (butenhof@zko.dec.com)
+    AIX 4.1.4/{draft7,DCE}              (nothing)
+            (buhrt@iquest.net)
+    IRIX 6.2/POSIX                      -lpthread
+            (jph@emilia.engr.sgi.com)
+
+
+Building a shared libpython
+---------------------------
+
+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
+executable, and by applications embedding Python. To enable this feature,
+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
+files using position-independent code (PIC) on platforms where PIC flags
+are needed for the shared library.
+
+
+Configuring additional built-in modules
+---------------------------------------
+
+Starting with Python 2.1, the setup.py script at the top of the source
+distribution attempts to detect which modules can be built and
+automatically compiles them.  Autodetection doesn't always work, so
+you can still customize the configuration by editing the Modules/Setup
+file; but this should be considered a last resort.  The rest of this
+section only applies if you decide to edit the Modules/Setup file.
+You also need this to enable static linking of certain modules (which
+is needed to enable profiling on some systems).
+
+This file is initially copied from Setup.dist by the configure script;
+if it does not exist yet, create it by copying Modules/Setup.dist
+yourself (configure will never overwrite it).  Never edit Setup.dist
+-- always edit Setup or Setup.local (see below).  Read the comments in
+the file for information on what kind of edits are allowed.  When you
+have edited Setup in the Modules directory, the interpreter will
+automatically be rebuilt the next time you run make (in the toplevel
+directory).
+
+Many useful modules can be built on any Unix system, but some optional
+modules can't be reliably autodetected.  Often the quickest way to
+determine whether a particular module works or not is to see if it
+will build: enable it in Setup, then if you get compilation or link
+errors, disable it -- you're either missing support or need to adjust
+the compilation and linking parameters for that module.
+
+On SGI IRIX, there are modules that interface to many SGI specific
+system libraries, e.g. the GL library and the audio hardware.  These
+modules will not be built by the setup.py script.
+
+In addition to the file Setup, you can also edit the file Setup.local.
+(the makesetup script processes both).  You may find it more
+convenient to edit Setup.local and leave Setup alone.  Then, when
+installing a new Python version, you can copy your old Setup.local
+file.
+
+
+Setting the optimization/debugging options
+------------------------------------------
+
+If you want or need to change the optimization/debugging options for
+the C compiler, assign to the OPT variable on the toplevel make
+command; e.g. "make OPT=-g" will build a debugging version of Python
+on most platforms.  The default is OPT=-O; a value for OPT in the
+environment when the configure script is run overrides this default
+(likewise for CC; and the initial value for LIBS is used as the base
+set of libraries to link with).
+
+When compiling with GCC, the default value of OPT will also include
+the -Wall and -Wstrict-prototypes options.
+
+Additional debugging code to help debug memory management problems can
+be enabled by using the --with-pydebug option to the configure script.
+
+For flags that change binary compatibility, use the EXTRA_CFLAGS
+variable.
+
+
+Profiling
+---------
+
+If you want C profiling turned on, the easiest way is to run configure
+with the CC environment variable to the necessary compiler
+invocation.  For example, on Linux, this works for profiling using
+gprof(1):
+
+    CC="gcc -pg" ./configure
+
+Note that on Linux, gprof apparently does not work for shared
+libraries.  The Makefile/Setup mechanism can be used to compile and
+link most extension modules statically.
+
+
+Coverage checking
+-----------------
+
+For C coverage checking using gcov, run "make coverage".  This will
+build a Python binary with profiling activated, and a ".gcno" and
+".gcda" file for every source file compiled with that option.  With
+the built binary, now run the code whose coverage you want to check.
+Then, you can see coverage statistics for each individual source file
+by running gcov, e.g.
+
+    gcov -o Modules zlibmodule
+
+This will create a "zlibmodule.c.gcov" file in the current directory
+containing coverage info for that source file.
+
+This works only for source files statically compiled into the
+executable; use the Makefile/Setup mechanism to compile and link
+extension modules you want to coverage-check statically.
+
+
+Testing
+-------
+
+To test the interpreter, type "make test" in the top-level directory.
+This runs the test set twice (once with no compiled files, once with
+the compiled files left by the previous test run).  The test set
+produces some output.  You can generally ignore the messages about
+skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported.
+If a message is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core
+dump is produced, something is wrong.  On some Linux systems (those
+that are not yet using glibc 6), test_strftime fails due to a
+non-standard implementation of strftime() in the C library. Please
+ignore this, or upgrade to glibc version 6.
+
+IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report,
+*don't* include the output of "make test".  It is useless.  Run the
+failing test manually, as follows:
+
+        ./python ./Lib/test/test_whatever.py
+
+(substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a
+different directory).  This runs the test in verbose mode.
+
+
+Installing
+----------
+
+To install the Python binary, library modules, shared library modules
+(see below), include files, configuration files, and the manual page,
+just type
+
+        make install
+
+This will install all platform-independent files in subdirectories of
+the directory given with the --prefix option to configure or to the
+`prefix' Make variable (default /usr/local).  All binary and other
+platform-specific files will be installed in subdirectories if the
+directory given by --exec-prefix or the `exec_prefix' Make variable
+(defaults to the --prefix directory) is given.
+
+If DESTDIR is set, it will be taken as the root directory of the
+installation, and files will be installed into $(DESTDIR)$(prefix),
+$(DESTDIR)$(exec_prefix), etc.
+
+All subdirectories created will have Python's version number in their
+name, e.g. the library modules are installed in
+"/usr/local/lib/python<version>/" by default, where <version> is the
+<major>.<minor> release number (e.g. "2.1").  The Python binary is
+installed as "python<version>" and a hard link named "python" is
+created.  The only file not installed with a version number in its
+name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
+by default.
+
+If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
+entitled "Installing multiple versions".
+
+The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
+Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el.  (But then again, more recent
+versions of Emacs may already have it.)  Follow the instructions that
+came with Emacs for installation of site-specific files.
+
+On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you
+should use "make frameworkinstall" to do the installation. Note that this
+installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
+PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
+
+
+Installing multiple versions
+----------------------------
+
+On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
+using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
+script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
+overwritten by the installation of a different versio.  All files and
+directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
+version and can thus live side-by-side.  "make install" also creates
+${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y.  If you intend
+to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
+version (if any) is your "primary" version.  Install that version using
+"make install".  Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
+
+For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
+the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
+directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
+
+
+Configuration options and variables
+-----------------------------------
+
+Some special cases are handled by passing options to the configure
+script.
+
+WARNING: if you rerun the configure script with different options, you
+must run "make clean" before rebuilding.  Exceptions to this rule:
+after changing --prefix or --exec-prefix, all you need to do is remove
+Modules/getpath.o.
+
+--with(out)-gcc: The configure script uses gcc (the GNU C compiler) if
+        it finds it.  If you don't want this, or if this compiler is
+        installed but broken on your platform, pass the option
+        --without-gcc.  You can also pass "CC=cc" (or whatever the
+        name of the proper C compiler is) in the environment, but the
+        advantage of using --without-gcc is that this option is
+        remembered by the config.status script for its --recheck
+        option.
+
+--prefix, --exec-prefix: If you want to install the binaries and the
+        Python library somewhere else than in /usr/local/{bin,lib},
+        you can pass the option --prefix=DIRECTORY; the interpreter
+        binary will be installed as DIRECTORY/bin/python and the
+        library files as DIRECTORY/lib/python/*.  If you pass
+        --exec-prefix=DIRECTORY (as well) this overrides the
+        installation prefix for architecture-dependent files (like the
+        interpreter binary).  Note that --prefix=DIRECTORY also
+        affects the default module search path (sys.path), when
+        Modules/config.c is compiled.  Passing make the option
+        prefix=DIRECTORY (and/or exec_prefix=DIRECTORY) overrides the
+        prefix set at configuration time; this may be more convenient
+        than re-running the configure script if you change your mind
+        about the install prefix.
+
+--with-readline: This option is no longer supported.  GNU
+        readline is automatically enabled by setup.py when present.
+
+--with-threads: On most Unix systems, you can now use multiple
+        threads, and support for this is enabled by default.  To
+        disable this, pass --with-threads=no.  If the library required
+        for threads lives in a peculiar place, you can use
+        --with-thread=DIRECTORY.  IMPORTANT: run "make clean" after
+        changing (either enabling or disabling) this option, or you
+        will get link errors!  Note: for DEC Unix use
+        --with-dec-threads instead.
+
+--with-sgi-dl: On SGI IRIX 4, dynamic loading of extension modules is
+        supported by the "dl" library by Jack Jansen, which is
+        ftp'able from ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-1.6.tar.Z.
+        This is enabled (after you've ftp'ed and compiled the dl
+        library) by passing --with-sgi-dl=DIRECTORY where DIRECTORY
+        is the absolute pathname of the dl library.  (Don't bother on
+        IRIX 5, it already has dynamic linking using SunOS style
+        shared libraries.)  THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
+
+--with-dl-dld: Dynamic loading of modules is rumored to be supported
+        on some other systems: VAX (Ultrix), Sun3 (SunOS 3.4), Sequent
+        Symmetry (Dynix), and Atari ST.  This is done using a
+        combination of the GNU dynamic loading package
+        (ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dl-dld-1.1.tar.Z) and an
+        emulation of the SGI dl library mentioned above (the emulation
+        can be found at
+        ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/dynload/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z).  To
+        enable this, ftp and compile both libraries, then call
+        configure, passing it the option
+        --with-dl-dld=DL_DIRECTORY,DLD_DIRECTORY where DL_DIRECTORY is
+        the absolute pathname of the dl emulation library and
+        DLD_DIRECTORY is the absolute pathname of the GNU dld library.
+        (Don't bother on SunOS 4 or 5, they already have dynamic
+        linking using shared libraries.)  THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
+
+--with-libm, --with-libc: It is possible to specify alternative
+        versions for the Math library (default -lm) and the C library
+        (default the empty string) using the options
+        --with-libm=STRING and --with-libc=STRING, respectively.  For
+        example, if your system requires that you pass -lc_s to the C
+        compiler to use the shared C library, you can pass
+        --with-libc=-lc_s. These libraries are passed after all other
+        libraries, the C library last.
+
+--with-libs='libs': Add 'libs' to the LIBS that the python interpreter
+        is linked against.
+
+--with-cxx-main=<compiler>: If you plan to use C++ extension modules,
+        then -- on some platforms -- you need to compile python's main()
+        function with the C++ compiler. With this option, make will use
+        <compiler> to compile main() *and* to link the python executable.
+        It is likely that the resulting executable depends on the C++
+        runtime library of <compiler>. (The default is --without-cxx-main.)
+
+        There are platforms that do not require you to build Python
+        with a C++ compiler in order to use C++ extension modules.
+        E.g., x86 Linux with ELF shared binaries and GCC 3.x, 4.x is such
+        a platform. We recommend that you configure Python
+        --without-cxx-main on those platforms because a mismatch
+        between the C++ compiler version used to build Python and to
+        build a C++ extension module is likely to cause a crash at
+        runtime.
+
+        The Python installation also stores the variable CXX that
+        determines, e.g., the C++ compiler distutils calls by default
+        to build C++ extensions. If you set CXX on the configure command
+        line to any string of non-zero length, then configure won't
+        change CXX. If you do not preset CXX but pass
+        --with-cxx-main=<compiler>, then configure sets CXX=<compiler>.
+        In all other cases, configure looks for a C++ compiler by
+        some common names (c++, g++, gcc, CC, cxx, cc++, cl) and sets
+        CXX to the first compiler it finds. If it does not find any
+        C++ compiler, then it sets CXX="".
+
+        Similarly, if you want to change the command used to link the
+        python executable, then set LINKCC on the configure command line.
+
+
+--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.
+        If enabled import and execfile will automatically accept any newline
+        in files. Python code can open a file with open(file, 'U') to
+        read it in universal newline mode. THIS OPTION IS UNSUPPORTED.
+
+--with-tsc: Profile using the Pentium timestamping counter (TSC).
+
+--with-system-ffi:  Build the _ctypes extension module using an ffi
+        library installed on the system.
+
+
+Building for multiple architectures (using the VPATH feature)
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+
+If your file system is shared between multiple architectures, it
+usually is not necessary to make copies of the sources for each
+architecture you want to support.  If the make program supports the
+VPATH feature, you can create an empty build directory for each
+architecture, and in each directory run the configure script (on the
+appropriate machine with the appropriate options).  This creates the
+necessary subdirectories and the Makefiles therein.  The Makefiles
+contain a line VPATH=... which points to a directory containing the
+actual sources.  (On SGI systems, use "smake -J1" instead of "make" if
+you use VPATH -- don't try gnumake.)
+
+For example, the following is all you need to build a minimal Python
+in /usr/tmp/python (assuming ~guido/src/python is the toplevel
+directory and you want to build in /usr/tmp/python):
+
+        $ mkdir /usr/tmp/python
+        $ cd /usr/tmp/python
+        $ ~guido/src/python/configure
+        [...]
+        $ make
+        [...]
+        $
+
+Note that configure copies the original Setup file to the build
+directory if it finds no Setup file there.  This means that you can
+edit the Setup file for each architecture independently.  For this
+reason, subsequent changes to the original Setup file are not tracked
+automatically, as they might overwrite local changes.  To force a copy
+of a changed original Setup file, delete the target Setup file.  (The
+makesetup script supports multiple input files, so if you want to be
+fancy you can change the rules to create an empty Setup.local if it
+doesn't exist and run it with arguments $(srcdir)/Setup Setup.local;
+however this assumes that you only need to add modules.)
+
+Also note that you can't use a workspace for VPATH and non VPATH builds. The
+object files left behind by one version confuses the other.
+
+
+Building on non-UNIX systems
+----------------------------
+
+For Windows (2000/NT/ME/98/95), assuming you have MS VC++ 7.1, the
+project files are in PCbuild, the workspace is pcbuild.dsw.  See
+PCbuild\readme.txt for detailed instructions.
+
+For other non-Unix Windows compilers, in particular MS VC++ 6.0 and
+for OS/2, enter the directory "PC" and read the file "readme.txt".
+
+For the Mac, a separate source distribution will be made available,
+for use with the CodeWarrior compiler.  If you are interested in Mac
+development, join the PythonMac Special Interest Group
+(http://www.python.org/sigs/pythonmac-sig/, or send email to
+pythonmac-sig-request@python.org).
+
+Of course, there are also binary distributions available for these
+platforms -- see http://www.python.org/.
+
+To port Python to a new non-UNIX system, you will have to fake the
+effect of running the configure script manually (for Mac and PC, this
+has already been done for you).  A good start is to copy the file
+pyconfig.h.in to pyconfig.h and edit the latter to reflect the actual
+configuration of your system.  Most symbols must simply be defined as
+1 only if the corresponding feature is present and can be left alone
+otherwise; however the *_t type symbols must be defined as some
+variant of int if they need to be defined at all.
+
+For all platforms, it's important that the build arrange to define the
+preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the compiler command line in a release
+build of Python (else assert() calls remain in the code, hurting
+release-build performance).  The Unix, Windows and Mac builds already
+do this.
+
+
+Miscellaneous issues
+====================
+
+Emacs mode
+----------
+
+There's an excellent Emacs editing mode for Python code; see the file
+Misc/python-mode.el.  Originally written by the famous Tim Peters, it
+is now maintained by the equally famous Barry Warsaw (it's no
+coincidence that they now both work on the same team).  The latest
+version, along with various other contributed Python-related Emacs
+goodies, is online at http://www.python.org/emacs/python-mode.  And
+if you are planning to edit the Python C code, please pick up the
+latest version of CC Mode http://www.python.org/emacs/cc-mode; it
+contains a "python" style used throughout most of the Python C source
+files.  (Newer versions of Emacs or XEmacs may already come with the
+latest version of python-mode.)
+
+
+Tkinter
+-------
+
+The setup.py script automatically configures this when it detects a
+usable Tcl/Tk installation.  This requires Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or
+higher.
+
+For more Tkinter information, see the Tkinter Resource page:
+http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/
+
+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"
+(lower case t and leading underscore) which lives in
+Modules/_tkinter.c.  Demos and normal Tk applications import only the
+Python Tkinter module -- only the latter imports the C _tkinter
+module.  In order to find the C _tkinter module, it must be compiled
+and linked into the Python interpreter -- the setup.py script does
+this.  In order to find the Python Tkinter module, sys.path must be
+set correctly -- normal installation takes care of this.
+
+
+Distribution structure
+----------------------
+
+Most subdirectories have their own README files.  Most files have
+comments.
+
+Demo/           Demonstration scripts, modules and programs
+Doc/            Documentation sources (reStructuredText)
+Grammar/        Input for the parser generator
+Include/        Public header files
+LICENSE         Licensing information
+Lib/            Python library modules
+Mac/            Macintosh specific resources
+Makefile.pre.in Source from which config.status creates the Makefile.pre
+Misc/           Miscellaneous useful files
+Modules/        Implementation of most built-in modules
+Objects/        Implementation of most built-in object types
+PC/             Files specific to PC ports (DOS, Windows, OS/2)
+PCbuild/        Build directory for Microsoft Visual C++
+Parser/         The parser and tokenizer and their input handling
+Python/         The byte-compiler and interpreter
+README          The file you're reading now
+RISCOS/         Files specific to RISC OS port
+Tools/          Some useful programs written in Python
+pyconfig.h.in   Source from which pyconfig.h is created (GNU autoheader output)
+configure       Configuration shell script (GNU autoconf output)
+configure.in    Configuration specification (input for GNU autoconf)
+install-sh      Shell script used to install files
+setup.py        Python script used to build extension modules
+
+The following files will (may) be created in the toplevel directory by
+the configuration and build processes:
+
+Makefile        Build rules
+Makefile.pre    Build rules before running Modules/makesetup
+buildno         Keeps track of the build number
+config.cache    Cache of configuration variables
+pyconfig.h      Configuration header
+config.log      Log from last configure run
+config.status   Status from last run of the configure script
+getbuildinfo.o  Object file from Modules/getbuildinfo.c
+libpython<version>.a    The library archive
+python          The executable interpreter
+reflog.txt      Output from running the regression suite with the -R flag 
+tags, TAGS      Tags files for vi and Emacs
+
+
+That's all, folks!
+------------------
+
+
+--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)