3.1 A Cookbook Approach

This section provides a recipe for building a Python extension on Windows.

Grab the binary installer from http://www.python.org/ and install Python. The binary installer has all of the required header files except for config.h.

Get the source distribution and extract it into a convenient location. Copy the config.h from the PC/ directory into the include/ directory created by the installer.

Create a Setup file for your extension module, as described in Chapter 2.

Get David Ascher's compile.py script from http://starship.python.net/crew/da/compile/. Run the script to create Microsoft Visual C++ project files.

Open the DSW file in VC++ and select Build.

If your module creates a new type, you may have trouble with this line:

    PyObject_HEAD_INIT(&PyType_Type)

Change it to:

    PyObject_HEAD_INIT(NULL)

and add the following to the module initialization function:

    MyObject_Type.ob_type = &PyType_Type;

Refer to section 3 of the Python FAQ (http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html) for details on why you must do this.