Wholly unnecessary flame. (was Re: pyXML!)

[David]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000 18:56:03 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh" <effbot at telia.com> wrote:

>David wrote:
>> Why is Visual C/C++ being used?  Why not Cygwin or Borland C/C++?  The
>> latter two are both freely available; one of them is, IIRC, even open
>> source.
>
>Feel free to contribute build files.  Or work on your motivational
>skills, and maybe someone somewhere will write them for you...

That doesn't really answer the question.
 
Question: Why was VC chosen as the development platform, instead of an
open-source compiler?
 
Question: Are any VC-specific features/code/tweaks being used?  Why would
the developers choose to bind the code to VC, rather than aim for
cross-compiler compatibility?
 
Question: Are build files so different between compilers that there is no
automatic tool for converting from build to build?
 
Question: Why wouldn't every Windows-platform code release include a binary
file, to accomodate the vast numbers of Windows users who don't have VC,
don't know how to operate the VC compiler and, frankly, really would rather
get on with using the code instead of wrestling with compiling it?
 
I don't know bugger all about C/C++, and I really don't want to.  I don't
have a compiler and I don't want to dedicate umpteen meg of drive space to
one.  One of the biggest reasons I've stuck with Windows instead of Linux
is that it is the most productive environment for the work I do, and with
that same attitude of most-work for least-effort, I look toward using
Python for my scripting needs, and desire pre-compiled binaries, so that I
can just get to work immediately.
 
>From my perspective, it makes absolutely no sense for any developer to (a)
not distribute binaries for their Windows port; and (b) to force users to
install a commercial compiler to create binaries.