[Distutils] MSVC CRT woes

[Mark Hammond]

> The latter would mean having to support 3-4 different distutils
> versions in your setup code. We already support 3-4 different Python
> versions (at Python and C level) and would like, if at all possible,
> to continue building all packages with one distutils version - the
> one in CVS which is the most up-to-date.

Just to throw one more minor spanner in the works, I believe I will be able
to provide a patch that means you must *build* your extension with the
Python version that the version targets - but can create a binary
distribution, for any Python version, using a single distutils version
(assuming it was previously built correctly)

I agree that in the future we should also allow you to build your extensions
using the most recent, but that is far less critical when you consider other
users - if someone other than the primary packager wants to build your
package, they probably don't have the 'latest' distutils available to them.

> That said, I think that including two wininst versions, one
> compiled with VC6, the other with VC7, would solve this problem
> nicely. You'd still have to have VC6/7 for compiling C extensions,
> but at least generating pure Python distutils wininst packages
> would remain possible.

Keeping the 'practicallity beats purity' theme, I agree.  It means that
whoever builds (and checks into CVS) wininst.exe must has *both* MSVC6 and
MSVC7, but there is a good chance they will anyway.

Is there any reason wininst.exe is not itself built using distutils?

Mark.