Python 3.8.13 for Windows XP SP3

[dmiranda]

On 10/7/2022 at 12:03 PM, cmalex said:

Most of wheels were built with http://files.1f0.de/mingw/mingw-w64-gcc-6.1-stable-r20.7z . http://files.1f0.de/mingw/mingw-w64-gcc-10.3-stable-r34.7z also work well on WinXP. Simple bat example

set "PATH=C:\Python38;D:\Mingw_61\bin;%PATH%"

python setup.py -c mingw32

Hi there.  It's been a decade since I've tried to build something, but all this chat has got me hooked to try and see if old XP can do it. I decided to give  a try to MSYS from https://github.com/akosela/msys2-xp, which claims pacman support, using http://files.1f0.de/mingw/mingw-w64-gcc-10.3-stable-r34.7z for mingw32.

"This project specifically aims to compile Yamagi Quake II for Windows XP. It includes all of the required dependencies. It also provides some other useful programs: mutt, irssi, tmux, git, ssh, lftp, curl/wget. If you need additional packages that still work under this version of MSYS2 you can take a look here: https://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/msys2. Download them to /msys2/var/cache/pacman/pkg and install with: $ pacman -U <package>.pkg.tar.xz"

I plan to also play with the minimalist https://archive.org/details/msys2xp, which comes with its own mingw 32 and a (alleged) control of package integrity.

I'm on 32, so I delete all 64.

In the meanwhile, I've been trying your set "PATH=C:\Python38;D:\Mingw_61\bin;%PATH%", but I run into an issue with "python setup.py -c mingw32": setup.py, not found. I searched in the files and found ...\Python\Lib\test\libregrtest\setup.py. Is that the one I'm supposed to use?

Thank you very much, Cmalex (and Zorba).

 

Edited October 30 by dmiranda

[Zorba the Geek]

On 30 October 2024 at 1:01 AM, dmiranda said:

In the meanwhile, I've been trying your set "PATH=C:\Python38;D:\Mingw_61\bin;%PATH%", but I run into an issue with "python setup.py -c mingw32": setup.py, not found. I searched in the files and found ...\Python\Lib\test\libregrtest\setup.py. Is that the one I'm supposed to use?

Where did you get "PATH=C:\Python38;D:\Mingw_61\bin;%PATH%" from?  To me this looks odd because the the path to Python38 is in the C drive and the path to Mingw is in the D drive.  No wonder you are having problems.  I cannot be bothered with virtual environments and all that, so alI I do is run a batch file to set the Python paths and change into the folder containing setup.py.  The path to Mingw is set in the Windows registry in this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

and is usually entered in System Properties/Advanced/Environment Variables.

You probably know this already, but for newbies it is necessary to create a file named distutils.cfg in the folder Python38/lib/distutils with these entries:

[build]
compiler=mingw32

[build_ext]
compiler=mingw32

My batch file for setting the Python environment variables is included below:

CP38_Env.bat

[dmiranda]

9 hours ago, Zorba the Geek said:

You probably know this already, but for newbies it is necessary to create a file named distutils.cfg in the folder Python38/lib/distutils with these entries:

[build]
compiler=mingw32

[build_ext]
compiler=mingw32

Hi Zorba, I misunderstod cmalex's wording, that's all. As per python, I'm a newb (so thank you very much for the indications above). msys-mingw I used to play with back when xp was young and shinny, so everuthing was all setup and updated with little (relative to today) user input, a long time ago. Cheers!

[Zorba the Geek]

On 28 October 2024 at 2:51 PM, dmiranda said:

tcl8.6 and tkl8.6 (as in zorba's and cmalex folders) don't work. Doing the following seems to make the trick:

move root\wish86t.exe and root\tclsh86t.exe into root\TCL\tclsh86t.exe and root\TCL\wish86t.exe
move the following folders from root\TLC to root\Lib (only files get left in TLC)

dde1.4, itcl4.2.2, nmake,reg1.3, sqlite3.36.0, tlcl8, tdbc1.1.3, tdbcmysql1.1.3, tdbcodbc1.1.3,
tdbcpostgres1.1.3, tdbcsqlite31.1.3, thread2.8.7, tcl8.6, tk8.6

This seems really weird.  I can only suppose that there is a problem with paths somewhere.  You can see a list of Python's built-in search paths using the following command:

python.exe -c "import sys;print(sys.path)"

This gives the following list for Python 3.8.1350:

D:\Python38
D:\Python38\DLLs
D:\Python38\Lib
D:\Python38\lib\site-packages
D:\Python38\lib\site-packages\win32
D:\Python38\lib\site-packages\win32\lib
D:\Python38\lib\site-packages\Pythonwin
D:\Python38\lib\site-packages\pywin32_system32
D:\Python38\python38.zip
D:\Python38\site-packages

Here is the list of paths for Python 3.4:

D:\Python34
D:\Python34\DLLs
D:\Python34\site-packages
D:\Python34\Lib
D:\WINDOWS\system32\python34.zip
D:\Python34lib\site-packages

There does not need to be a path for the TCL directory because tk86t.dll and tcl86t.dll are in the root directory along with python38.dll.  tk86t.dll and tcl86t.dll have the paths to their libraries baked in at compilation, but if there is a problem you could set these environment variables;

set TK_LIBRARY=%SystemDrive%\Python38\TCL\tk8.6
set TCL_LIBRARY=%SystemDrive%\Python38\TCL\tcl8.6

If you have installed Python somewhere other than the root of the system drive you should use these commands:

set TK_LIBRARY=.\Python38\TCL\tk8.6
set TCL_LIBRARY=.\Python38\TCL\tcl8.6

I did a test to see if the Tkinter command line (TCL) could be invoked in the usual way using instructions at a site titled Python-Tcl-Interactions

First start the Python interpreter by typing python then enter.  At the command prompt enter these commands to start an instance of the Tcl interpreter:

import tkinter
tcl_intrpr = tkinter.Tcl()

You can do a test to show that the Tcl interpreter is actually invoked by doing these commands to make a simple calculation:

res = tcl_intrpr.eval('expr 12+23')
res
'35'

This proved that Tcl is operating as expected using cmalex's distribution of Python 3.8.1350 for Windows XP.