[Python-Dev] [win32] Killing MSVC's _alloca

[Delaney, Timothy]

> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido@python.org]
> 
> I don't understand.  How many Unix emulations on Windows do we need?
> We've already absorbed a sheer endless set of patches to make it work
> on CYGWIN.  How does Mingw differ?

None at all. MinGW is not a Unix emulation. There is a minimal shell
environment (MSYS) which works with MinGW (allowing use of the autoconf/make
toolchain) but the produced binaries have no reliance on anything except the
native win32 libraries.

I was recently trying to use MinGW to compile Python CVS at home - I don't
own, not will I pay for MSVC++. I occasionally have to use it at work, but
only from the command line ;) I gave up when it got into posixmodule.c and
there was lots of stuff there I didn't know about.

I personally am very pleased that Gerhard is working so hard to make this a
viable compilation option on Windows.

http://www.mingw.org/
http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml

Tim Delaney