Linux Build Hints
-----------------
(Tested on RedHat 4.x, Gentoo 2008.0, Ubuntu 8.x, and Debian 4.x)
These hints are based on using Oracle's instantclient_11_1.  It is necessary
to download both 'instantclient-linux-basic' and 'instantclient-sdk-linux' from
oracle.com in order to successfully compile.  

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html

Each compressed tarball needs to be extracted to the exact same location.
Uncompress and untar each file from the same location in order to achieve this
result. If placing into a system area such as /opt or /usr/local, make sure to
have the correct permissions for writing to these filesystems and/or
directories. It is advisable to use the same account from start to finish while
installing cx_Oracle in order not to clobber the pre-set environment variables
set below.

It is necessary to set environment variables ORACLE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH
inside $HOME/.profile in order for cx_Oracle to import properly after
installation and in order to build correctly. Using a text editor add the
settings below to $HOME/.profile making sure to change the location of your 
actual installation path.

   Example ($HOME/.profile):
   -------------------------
   export ORACLE_HOME=[your installation path]/instantclient_11_1
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME

To put these variables into the working shell env, either source .profile
(. $HOME/.profile) or execute each export statement above from a shell
individually to set these variables. If these are not added to $HOME/.profile
they will need to be manually set each time cx_Oracle is loaded into Python.

After both packages are untarred to there installation location a link needs
to be made inside the instantclient_11_1 directory. If you are using a
different version of the instant client simply adjust the link per the version
of libclntsh.so.

   Steps:
   ------
   cd $ORACLE_HOME
   ln -s libclntsh.so.x.x libclntsh.so

Continue to step: Building and Compilation.


OS X Build Hints
----------------
(Tested on Leopard 10.5.x)
The procedures for OS X are almost idential to Linux except for the package
names and a few environmental caveats. For OS X it is necessary to download
both 'instantclient-basic-macosx' and 'instantclient-sdk-macosx'. Download and
extract each file per the build hints for Linux.

For OS X it is necessary to set environment variables ORACLE_HOME,
LD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH inside $HOME/.profile and start a new
shell before testing cx_Oracle. If .profile does not exist, simply create one
with a text editor and add the necessary path info to these variables.

   Example ($HOME/.profile):
   -------------------------
   export ORACLE_HOME=[your installation path]/instantclient_11_1
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME
   export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME

The variables placed inside $HOME/.profile need to be set prior to building.
Therefore, source .profile (. $HOME/.profile) or execute each export statement
above from a shell individually to set these variables.  Not having
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH set inside $HOME/.profile prior to building will cause a
compilation error regardless of being set in the current shell's env.

After both packages are untarred a link needs to be made inside the
instantclient_11_1 directory.  If you are using a different version of the
instant client simply adjust the link per the version of libclntsh.dylib.

   Steps:
   ------
   cd $ORACLE_HOME
   ln -s libclntsh.dylib.x.x libclntsh.dylib

Continue to step: Building and Compilation.


Building and Compilation
------------------------
Use the provided setup.py to build and install the module which makes use of 
the distutils module. Note that on Windows, I have used mingw32 
(http://www.mingw.org) and the module will not build with MSVC without 
modification. The commands required to build and install the module are as 
follows:

    python setup.py build
    python setup.py install


Testing (Post Installation Quick Test)
--------------------------------------
A very quick installation test can be performed from the command line using
the Python interpreter. Below is an example of how this done. After importing
cx_Oracle there should be a line containing only '>>>' which indicates the
library successfully loaded.

    $ python
    Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Oct 25 2008, 19:37:28)
    [GCC 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.1)] on linux2
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import cx_Oracle
    >>>

