Installing lxml =============== Requirements ------------ You need Python 2.3 or later. You need libxml2 and libxslt, in particular: * libxml 2.6.21 or later. It can be found here: http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html If you want to use XPath, do not use libxml2 2.6.27. We recommend libxml2 2.7.2 or later. * libxslt 1.1.15 or later. It can be found here: http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/downloads.html Newer versions generally contain less bugs and are therefore recommended. XML Schema support is also still worked on in libxml2, so newer versions will give you better complience with the W3C spec. Installation ------------ If you have easy_install_, you can run the following as super-user (or administrator):: easy_install lxml .. _easy_install: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall This has been reported to work on Linux, MacOS-X 10.4 and Windows, as long as libxml2 and libxslt are properly installed (including development packages, i.e. header files, etc.). Building lxml from sources -------------------------- If you want to build lxml from SVN you should read `how to build lxml from source`_ (or the file ``doc/build.txt`` in the source tree). Building from Subversion sources or from modified distribution sources requires Cython_ to translate the lxml sources into C code. The source distribution ships with pre-generated C source files, so you do not need Cython installed to build from release sources. .. _Cython: http://www.cython.org .. _`how to build lxml from source`: build.html If you have read these instructions and still cannot manage to install lxml, you can check the archives of the `mailing list`_ to see if your problem is known or otherwise send a mail to the list. .. _`mailing list`: http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/lxml-dev MS Windows ---------- For MS Windows, the `binary egg distribution of lxml`_ is statically built against the libraries, i.e. it already includes them. There is no need to install the external libraries if you use an official lxml build from PyPI. If you want to upgrade the libraries and/or compile lxml from sources, you should install a `binary distribution`_ of libxml2 and libxslt. You need both libxml2 and libxslt, as well as iconv and zlib. .. _`binary distribution`: http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html .. _`binary egg distribution of lxml`: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/lxml MacOS-X ------- The system libraries of libxml2 and libxslt installed under MacOS-X tend to be rather outdated. In any case, they are older than the required versions for lxml 2.x, so you will have a hard time getting lxml to work without installing newer libraries. A number of users reported success with updated libraries (e.g. using fink_ or macports), but needed to set the runtime environment variable ``DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH`` to the directory where fink keeps the libraries. See the `FAQ entry on MacOS-X`_ for more information. .. _fink: http://finkproject.org/ .. _`FAQ entry on MacOS-X`: FAQ.html#my-application-crashes-on-macos-x A macport of lxml is available. Try ``port install py25-lxml``.