Python curses wheels for Windows
This is the repository for the windows-curses wheels on PyPI. The wheels are based on the wheels on Christoph Gohlke's page.
Only build-wheels.bat
is original work.
Wheels built from this repository can be installed with this command:
pip install windows-curses
Starting with version 2.0, these wheels include a hack to make resizing work for Python applications that haven't been specifically adapted for PDCurses. See this commit. The description on PyPI has a longer explanation.
Note that this hack is not in Gohlke's wheels.
Maintainers Wanted
This project is not actively maintained and is looking for maintainers.
If you are interested, please let us know by either creating an issue here or messaging in the #windows-support channel on Zephyr Discord.
Background
The curses
module is in the Python standard library, but is not available on
Windows. Trying to import curses
gives an import error for _curses
, which
is provided by Modules/_cursesmodule.c
in the CPython source code.
The wheels provided here are based on patches from
https://bugs.python.org/issue2889, which make minor modifications to
_cursesmodule.c
to make it compatible with Windows and the
PDCurses curses implementation. setup.py
defines HAVE_*
macros for features available in PDCurses and makes some minor
additional compatibility tweaks.
The patched _cursesmodule.c
is linked against PDCurses to produce a wheel
that provides the _curses
module on Windows and allows the standard curses
module to run.
Unicode support
The wheels are built with wide character support and force the encoding to
UTF-8. Remove UTF8=y
from the nmake
line in build-wheels.bat
to use the
default system encoding instead.
Build instructions
-
Clone the repository with the following command:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/windows-curses.git
--recurse-submodules
pulls in the required PDCurses Git submodule. -
Install compilers compatible with the Python versions that you want to builds wheel for by following the instructions at https://wiki.python.org/moin/WindowsCompilers.
Visual Studio 2019 will work for Python 3.6-3.9.
Visual Studio 2022 will work for Python 3.10-3.11.
-
Install Python 3.6 or later to get the Python launcher for Windows.
-
Install any other Python versions you want to build wheels for.
Only the Python X.Y versions that have
pyXY\
directories are supported. -
Install/upgrade the
wheel
andsetuptools
packages for all Python versions. Taking Python 3.6 as an example, the following command will do it:py -3.6 -m pip install --upgrade wheel setuptools
py
is the Python launcher, which makes it easy to run a particular Python version. -
Open the Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt of the compiler required by the version of Python that you want to build a wheel for.
Use the 32-bit version (
x86 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
) to build wheels for 32-bit Python versions, and the 64-bit version (e.g.x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
) to build wheels for 64-bit Python versions. -
Run
build-wheels.bat
, passing it the Python version you're building a wheel for. For example, the following command will build a wheel for Python 3.6:build-wheels.bat 3.6
If you have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same Python version installed and are building a 32-bit wheel, add "-32" to the version number, like in the following example:
build-wheels.bat 3.6-32
If you are building multiple wheels for Python versions that are all compatible with the same compiler, you can list all of them in the same command:
build-wheels.bat 3.6 3.7
build-wheels.bat
first cleans and rebuilds PDCurses, and then builds and links the source code inpyXY\
for each of the specified Python versions, producing wheels as output indist\
.
Rebuilding the wheels for Python 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11
In x86 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
:
build-wheels.bat 3.6-32 3.7-32 3.8-32 3.9-32 3.10-32 3.11-32
In x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
:
build-wheels.bat 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11
This gives a set of wheels in dist\
.
Compatibility note
This building scheme above should be the safest one to use. In practice, many of the resulting wheels seem to be forwards- and backwards-compatible.
Making a new release
-
Bump the version number in
setup.py
according to the Semantic versioning. -
Create a Git tag for the release:
git tag -s -m "windows-curses 1.2.3" v1.2.3 git push upstream v1.2.3
For pre-releases, add
aNUMBER
after the release name (e.g.v1.2.3a1
,v1.2.3a2
, ...). -
Create a GitHub release from the tag.
The name of the GitHub release should match the name of the release tag (e.g.
v1.2.3
) and its body should contain a brief release note.
Once a GitHub release is created, the GitHub Actions CI will automatically build and upload the wheels to the PyPI.
Uploading to PyPI
NOTE: The process of uploading wheels for releases is automated using the GitHub Actions and manual uploads should not be necessary under normal circumstances.
Don't forget to bump the version number in setup.py
before building new
wheels. Semantic versioning is intended.
Once the wheels are built, follow the instructions here to upload them to PyPI.
pip
/PyPI will look at the wheel metadata and automatically install the right
version of the wheel.
Adding support for a new Python version
-
Create a new directory for the Python version, e.g.
py39\
-
Copy
Modules\_cursesmodule.c
from the CPython source code topy39\_cursesmodule.c
-
Apply the PDCurses compatibility patch from this commit and the resizing hack from this commit to the new
py39\_cursesmodule.c
. -
Copy
Modules\_curses_panel.c
,Modules\clinic\_cursesmodule.c.h
, andModules\clinic\_curses_panel.c.h
from the CPython sources topy39\_curses_panel.c
,py39\clinic\_cursesmodule.c.h
andpy39\clinic\_curses_panel.c.h
, respectively -
Add the build specifications for the new Python version in
.github/workflows/ci.yml
.
In practise, Modules\_cursesmodule.c
from newer Python 3 versions is likely to be compatible with older Python 3 versions too. The Python 3.6 and 3.7 wheels are currently built from identical _cursesmodule.c
files (but not the Python 3.8 or 3.9 wheels).
For Python 3.10 and 3.11 it is necessary to adapt _cursesmodule.c
and clinic\_cursesmodule.c.h
files to new Python API (decribed more here https://devguide.python.org/c-api). It demands removing two headers files as described in this commit.