[Python-Dev] Visual studio 2005 express now free

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Microsoft just announced that Visual Studio 2005 express will be free
> forever, including the IDE and the optimizing C++ compiler. (Not
> included in the "forever" clause are VS 2007 or later versions.)
> 
> Does this make a difference for Python development for Windows?

For future versions, perhaps. For 2.5, I think we now have settled
on VS 2003, for several reasons:
- I personally consider VS 2005 still verdant (crude? immature?
  unfledged?). They can't really mean the whole breakage they have
  done to the C library. Also, I expect another release of VS
  after Vista, to cover all the new .NET API, and I hope that
  we can skip VS 2005 (although Vista gets delays, and so gets
  VS 2007)
- Fredrik Lundh points out that it would be nice if people producing
  extensions for multiple Python releases wouldn't need a separate
  compiler for each release.
- Paul Moore has contributed a Python build procedure for the
  free version of the 2003 compiler. This one is without IDE,
  but still, it should allow people without a VS 2003 license
  to work on Python itself; it should also be possible to develop
  extensions with that compiler (although I haven't verified
  that distutils would pick that up correctly).

Regards,
Martin