Question

I must build lxml from source. https://github.com/lxml/lxml
As the file /doc/build.txt says, source code should be provided with pre-compiled .c files. Why I don’t find them? in /src/lxml there are only .pyx files. Where .c files are??

In fact I have the lxml.etree.c missing file during python build command.

Thank you

Answer 1

You misread build.txt. It says

The lxml.etree and lxml.objectify modules are written in Cython_.
Since we distribute the Cython-generated .c files with lxml releases,
however, you do not need Cython to build lxml from the normal release
sources.

So you need to get “normal release sources” to have the C files pre-compiled, e.g. from
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/lxml. If you check out from git, you need Cython:

Only if you are interested in building lxml from a checkout of the developer sources (e.g. to test a bug fix that has not been release
yet) or if you want to be an lxml developer, then you do need a
working Cython installation.