Welcome to the "PC" subdirectory of the 4Suite distribution
-----------------------------------------------------------

This "PC" subdirectory contains all the PC-specific 4Suite source files.


Files and directories
---------------------

* build_scripts\
    Contains the sources for the script stub launcher.


Compilers used for building 4Suite
----------------------------------

* VC++ 6.0
    Only usable with Python 2.2 and 2.3
* VC++ 7.1 (a.k.a. Visual Studio .NET 2003)
    Only usable with Python 2.4 and 2.5
* MinW32
    Usable with all Python versions
    

Building 4Suite using the free MS Toolkit Compiler
--------------------------------------------------

Note that Microsoft have withdrawn the free MS Toolkit Compiler, so this can
no longer be considered a supported option. The instructions are still
correct, but you need to already have a copy of the compiler in order to use
them. Microsoft now supply Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition for free, but this
is NOT compatible with Visual C++ 7.1 (it uses a different C runtime), and so
cannot be used to build a version of 4Suite compatible with the standard
python.org build.

Requirements

    To build 4Suite, the following tools are required:

    * The Visual C++ Toolkit Compiler
        no longer available for download - see above
    * The .NET 1.1 Redistributable
        from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3
    * The .NET 1.1 SDK
        from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b3a2ca6-3647-4070-9f41-a333c6b9181d
    * A recent Platform SDK
        from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A55B6B43-E24F-4EA3-A93E-40C0EC4F68E5

    * 4Suite developers - the above tools are available via "sftp" from:
        cvs.4suite.org:/var/ftp/cvs/windows

    The toolkit compiler is needed as it is an optimising compiler (the
    compiler supplied with the .NET SDK is a non-optimising version). The
    platform SDK is needed to provide the Windows header files and libraries
    (the Windows 2003 Server SP1 edition, typical install, is known to work -
    other configurations or versions are probably fine as well). The .NET 1.1
    SDK is needed because it contains a version of msvcrt.dll which links to
    the msvcr71.dll CRT. Note that the .NET 2.0 SDK is NOT acceptable, as it
    references msvcr80.dll.

    All of the above items should be installed as normal.

Setting up the environment

    Run the "register_vctoolkit.py" script in this directory.

    That's it. To build 4Suite you can now just use "setup.py" as normal.