[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer

[Guido van Rossum]

A month ago at Python UK in Oxford (which was colocated with C and C++
standardization meetings as well as a general C and C++ users
conference) I met with some folks from Microsoft's VC development
team, including the project lead, Nick Hodapp.  I told Nick that
Python for Windows was still built using VC 6.  He pointed out that
the actual compilers (not the GUI) from VC 7 are freely downloadable.

More recently, Nick sent me an email offering to donate copies of VC 7
to the "key developers".  I count Tim, myself and Mark Hammond among
the key developers.  Is there anyone else who would count themselves
among those?

I presume he's offering the pro version, which has a real optimizer,
unlike the "standard" version that was kindly donated by Bjorn
Pettersen.

I can see advantages and disadvantages of moving to VC 7; I'm sure the
VC 7 compiler is more standard-compliant and generates faster code,
but a disadvantage is that you can't apparently link binaries built
with VC 6 to a program built with VC 7, meaning that 3rd party
extensions will have to be recompiled with VC 7 as well.  I have no
idea how many projects this will affect (don't worry about Zope Corp
:-).  Maybe we should try to include those 3rd party developers in the
deal.  (I think Robin Dunn would be affected, wxPython has a Windows
distribution.)

If you think this is a bad idea or if you would like to qualify for a
compiler donation, please follow up!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)