[Python-Dev] Building Python with Visual C++ 2005 ExpressEdition

[Neil Hodgson]

Martin v. Löwis:

> The problem (for me, atleast) is that VC is so much more convenient to
> work with.

   In my experience Visual C++ has always produced faster, more
compact code than Mingw. While this may not be true with current
releases, I'd want to ensure that the normal Python download for
Windows didn't become slower. Visual C++ 2005 includes profile guided
optimization (although this is not included in the Express Edition)
and it would be interesting to see how much of a difference this
makes. Microsoft was willing to give some copies of VS to Python
developers before so I expect they'd be willing to give some copies of
VS Professional or Team System.

Tim Delaney:

> There was a considerable amount of angst with the 2.4 release that can be
> blamed solely on the CRT change (and hence different DLLs to link to). And
> with them deprecating ISO standard functions ...

   One solution to CRT change is to drop direct linking of modules to
the CRT and vector them through the core DLL. The core PythonXX.DLL
would expose an array of functions (malloc, strdup, getcwd, ...) that
would be called by all modules indirectly. Then, it no longer matters
which compiler version or compiler you build extension modules with.
Its quite a lot of work to do this as each CRT call site needs to
change or a well thought through macro scheme be developed.

Paul Moore:

> The project file conversions seemed to go fine, and the debug builds
> were OK, although the deprecation warnings for all the "insecure" CRT
> functions was a pain. It might be worth adding
> _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE to the project defines somehow.

   I haven't tried to build Python with VC++ 2005 yet, but other code
has also required _CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE for some of the file
system calls.

   Neil