.. default-role:: literal

================================
 Installation of multiprocessing
================================

Versions earlier than Python 2.4 are not supported.  If you are using
Python 2.4 then you must install the `ctypes` package (which comes
automatically with Python 2.5). Users of Python 2.4 on Windows
also need to install the `pywin32` package.

On Unix It's highly recommended to use Python 2.5.3 (not yet released) or
apply the ``fork-thread-patch-2`` patch from `Issue 1683
http://bugs.python.org/issue1683`_.

Windows binary builds for Python 2.4 and Python 2.5 are available at

    http://pypi.python.org/pypi/multiprocessing

Python 2.6 and newer versions already come with multiprocessing. Although 
the stand alone variant of the multiprocessing package is kept compatible
with 2.6, you mustn't install it with Python 2.6.

Otherwise, if you have the correct C compiler setup then the source
distribution can be installed the usual way::

   python setup.py install

It should not be necessary to do any editing of `setup.py` if you are
using Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.  On other unices it may be necessary
to modify the values of the `macros` dictionary or `libraries` list.
The section to modify reads ::

    else:
        macros = dict(
            HAVE_SEM_OPEN=1,
            HAVE_SEM_TIMEDWAIT=1,
            HAVE_FD_TRANSFER=1
            )
        libraries = ['rt']

More details can be found in the comments in `setup.py`.

Note that if you use `HAVE_SEM_OPEN=0` then support for posix
semaphores will not been compiled in, and then many of the functions
in the `processing` namespace like `Lock()`, `Queue()` or will not be
available.  However, one can still create a manager using `manager =
processing.Manager()` and then do `lock = manager.Lock()` etc.


Running tests
-------------

To run the test scripts using Python 2.5 do ::

    python -m multiprocessing.tests

and on Python 2.4 do ::

    python -c "from multiprocessing.tests import main; main()"

The sources also come with a Makefile. To run the unit tests with the
Makefile using Python 2.5 do ::

    make test

using another version of Python do ::

    make test PYTHON=python2.4

This will run a number of test scripts using both processes and threads.


Running examples
----------------

The make target `examples` runs several example scripts.


Building docs
-------------

To build the standalone documentation you need Sphinx 0.5 and setuptools
0.6c9 or newer. Both are available at http://pypi.python.org/. With 
setuptools installed, do ::

    sudo easy_install-2.5 "Sphinx>=0.5"
    make doc

The docs end up in ``build/sphinx/builder_name``.

