Pygame Installation

Python can be built from source, but the easiest way is to get a binary package for your type of system and version of python. This document will give you information on either type of installation.

This is probably the most popular method of installation. If you are running on windows, it is highly recommended you use this form of installing. The installers come with with nearly everything you need, and have an easy point and click installers.

The first thing you will need is an installation of Python. Python binary installers make it easy to get this done. Pygame binaries usually come for the latest 2 releases of python, so you'll want to be fairly up to date.

Once that is in place, you want to download the appropriate windows binary. From the pygame downloads page you can find the .EXE file you need. This will automatically install all of pygame and all the SDL dependencies. The windows binaries have filenames like this; "pygame-1.3.win32-py2.1.exe". This would be the installer for pygame version 1.3, for python version 2.1. You shouldn't have trouble finding the correct binary from the "Windows" section of the download page. http://www.pygame.org/download.shtml.

You will also probably want to install the windows documentation and installation package. This will add easy links to the different documentation and games that come with pygame. The installer for this is found next to the other windows binary downloads. The filename looks like this; "pygame-docs-1.3.exe". And this would install the documentation and examples for pygame-1.3.

One other thing the windows binaries are missing is the Numeric Python package. You can easily install this separately and it will allow you to use the pygame "surfarray" module. This module is optional, so there is no need to do this. There are binary installers from the Numeric download page. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1369.

For many unix systems, the easiest way to install pygame is from source. Still, there are binary packages available for different distributions.

There are several binary RPM packages for linux machines. These are actually a little bit of work to install, since you will also need several RPM packages for the dependencies. There is a good chance your linux distribution came with the needed dependencies (like Python and SDL). There are binary RPMs available from the website for each dependency.

For debian systems, pygame is actively maintained in the debian archives. It is available for the "woody" release. Visit the debian pygame page for more information. http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=pygame

FreeBSD also has an active pygame package. While techinicaly it isn't binary, it is automatically built and installed by the ports manager. See the FreeBSD package page for more information. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=py-game&stype=name

There are separate binaries for both MacOS and OSX. For both these operating systems, there are several remaining problems with the Python and SDL dependencies. Therefore the binary packages for pygame also come with fixed versions of python and the SDL libraries.

For MacOS, binaries are available on the pygame downloads page. http://www.pygame.org/download.shtml. Unfortunately the binaries are stuck at pygame version-1.1.

For OSX, there is also a large collection of binary files. Currently these are available at the OSX packager's website, http://redivi.com/~bob/. Visit the site for more information on current issues with the OSX port, as well as screenshots of OSX pygame in action.

Compiling and installing pygame is handled by Python's distutils. Pygame also comes with some scripts to automatically configure the flags needed to build pygame. Use the "setup.py" script to start the installation.

The first time you run the setup script, it will call the "config.py" script. This will build a "Setup" file which stores all the information needed to compile. The "config.py" will do a good job of detecting what dependencies are available and where they are located. If it isn't perfect, it is easy to build your own, or edit the created "Setup" text file. This "Setup" file is a simple Makefile-like text file. It defines variables needed to use each dependency, and then enables all the pygame modules with found dependencies. If you have trouble compiling, you should be able to easily fix any problems inside the "Setup" file.

Running the "setup.py" script will call distutils to build and install the pygame package. Distutils actually supports a wide variety of compile and install options. running "python setup.py help" will start to show you the different options available. You can change many things like install locations, compiler to use, and more. Calling the "setup.py" script with no arguments and it will just ask you if you want the default flags needed to compile and install.

Compiling all the dependencies on windows is a real challenge. Fortunately there is zip file with all the libraries and headers you need to compile. You should definitely unzip this into your pygame source folder, and all the files go into a "prebuilt" subdirectory. The autoconfigure "config.py" script will find this prebuilt directory and make use of it for you. http://www.pygame.org/ftp/win32-dependencies.zip. If you don't use the prebuilt binaries directory, the autoconfig script will scan the neighboring directory trees to find the dependencies.

When installing on windows, the "setup.py" script will also copy all the used .DLL files into the pygame directory.

Compiling from linux shouldn't give you any problems. One thing you must keep in mind is that most linux packages separate the actual library from the "dev" files needed to compile. To build on linux you'll need to make sure the packages like "SDL-dev" are installed.

You can check to see if SDL is ready to be built from by running the command "sdl-config" and seeing if it is found.

Depending on where the SMPEG headers are installed, the pygame "config.py" script might not actually find it. If this happens you can easily fix the SMPEG line in the "Setup" script to use the correct flags. Then also uncomment the line for the "movie" module.

Several users have run into error compiling when trying to use the Numeric Python header files. This is a problem with the autoconfigure script. The script foolishly assumes if it can import the Numeric module, then the headers will be available for compile. You need to either install the correct "python-numeric-dev" package for your system, or comment out the line for "surfarray" in the "Setup" file.

Building pygame on OSX is not really supported yet. Actually, the "config.py" script will actually do a good job on OSX. Unfortunately, there are some bugs with both SDL and Python for OSX, so it will be difficult to build a working version of pygame on your own. You will also need to build the SDL libraries as ".dylib" libraries, which is not the default build mode for these.