The distribution includes these files:

-  README               About this release
-  LICENSE              Terms from Python Software Foundation
-  Tests                Results of distribution tests.
-  INSTALL              (This file.)
-  install-python       Install script.
-  Python-2.2.2.zip     Python binary distribution
-  Python-2.2.2.patch   Source patches for BeOS

You need about 14 Mb free disk space in /boot/home/config.

This procedure does not try to account for a possible prior install
of python2.2.  Earlier versions of python, like 2.1, are no problem
because the files are installed in their own parallel directories.
A prior install of python 2.2 will be somewhat painful, because unzip
will ask you about every file it's going to overwrite.  I would delete
them all beforehand.

Open a Terminal window, and cd to the directory where the file you are
looking at right now is located.

Run install:

   ./install-python

The install script unzips Python-2.1.zip in /boot/home/config,
where it installs
   bin/python2.2              python main.
   include/python2.2          C include files.
   lib/libpython2.2.so        Core python library
   lib/python2.2              Python modules (.py only, not .pyc/.pyo)
   lib/python2.2/plat-beos5   Bethon-0.5.0 BeOS modules (mostly .so)

Then it makes a symbolic link bin/python that points to bin/python2.2.

That completes the install, and you may delete the original files.
You may want to install the readline module, if you like to run
the interpreter interactively, because it supports Emacs and Vi
mode editing.  I haven't included it here because I don't want
GNU hassles, but it builds automatically during the Python 2.2
build if you have /boot/home/config/lib/libreadline.a

To build the Python 2.2 source yourself, get the source (at for
example http://www.python.org/) and expand the archive.  You'll
get a directory called Python-2.2.2.  Use the Python-2.2.2.patch
here, to modify the standard distribution so it will build on BeOS.

 $ cd Python-2.2.2
 $ patch -p0 -b -suffix=.orig < Python-2.2.2-patch

 $ configure
    (it has been patched to default to --prefix=/boot/home/config)
 $ make
 $ make install    (if you want.)

	Donn Cave, donn@drizzle.com
