MSVC 6.0 Unsupported?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Gerhard Häring wrote:
> Syver Enstad wrote:
> 
>> I've downloaded both source distro, and binary installer. Installed
>> python with the binary installer, when I attempted to compile
>> mxDateTime (mxBase) for 2.3 with MSVC 6.0 I got an error that seemed
>> related to forward declarations.
>>
>> It seems that the #defines that makes staticforward into extern when
>> using the MSVC 6 compiler has been removed from object.h. So I guess
>> this means I should use VC++ 7.0 to compile python with?
> 
> Huh? You couldn't be more wrong.
> 
> 1) Python 2.3 binaries *are* built with MSVC6
> 
> 2) staticforward was defined from exten to empty on win32 for Python 2.3

... and that's the problem: MS VC6 doesn't work with static
forwards. Previous Python versions therefore defined a macro
called BAD_STATIC_FORWARD which triggered a work-around in
Python.

That work-around was removed in Python 2.3 for some reason
I don't understand (and I just stumbled over it when I tried
to compile egenix-mx-base against Python 2.3 on Windows --
we do regular builds against the Python 2.3 on Linux and gcc
does not botch the static forwards, so we didn't see the
problem before the Python 2.3 release).

> 3) The quick hack I used is to insert something like:
> 
> #ifdef _MSC_VER
> #define staticforward extern
> #endif
> 
> in the relevant source files *after* they include Python.h.

The best thing to do is to replace this code in Python's object.h
file (Python23\Include\object.h; note the comment !):

/*
Define staticforward and statichere for source compatibility with old
C extensions.

The staticforward define was needed to support certain broken C
compilers (notably SCO ODT 3.0, perhaps early AIX as well) botched the
static keyword when it was used with a forward declaration of a static
initialized structure.  Standard C allows the forward declaration with
static, and we've decided to stop catering to broken C compilers.
(In fact, we expect that the compilers are all fixed eight years later.)
*/

#define staticforward static
#define statichere static

with this snippet (the previously used one):

/*
A common programming style in Python requires the forward declaration
of static, initialized structures, e.g. for a type object that is used
by the functions whose address must be used in the initializer.
Some compilers (notably SCO ODT 3.0, I seem to remember early AIX as
well) botch this if you use the static keyword for both declarations
(they allocate two objects, and use the first, uninitialized one until
the second declaration is encountered).  Therefore, the forward
declaration should use the 'forwardstatic' keyword.  This expands to
static on most systems, but to extern on a few.  The actual storage
and name will still be static because the second declaration is
static, so no linker visible symbols will be generated.  (Standard C
compilers take offense to the extern forward declaration of a static
object, so I can't just put extern in all cases. :-( )
*/

#ifdef BAD_STATIC_FORWARD
#define staticforward extern
#define statichere static
#else /* !BAD_STATIC_FORWARD */
#define staticforward static
#define statichere static
#endif /* !BAD_STATIC_FORWARD */

> Anyway you can't compile the eGenix extensions with Python 2.3. I hoped 
> this gets fixed soon. The compile fails somewhere in the mxTextTools 
> stuff. All I needed was mxDateTime and I got that to compile.
> 
> If you need Windoze binaries, I've uploaded some for the pyPgSQL project 
> at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16528
> 
> pypgsql-experimental
>     
>      Python 2.3b2    2003-07-17 11:22
>     egenix-mx-base-2.0.4.win32-py2.3.exe    471273     6     i386    
> .exe (32-bit Windows)

FYI, we'll release fixed versions later this week.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Software directly from the Source  (#1, Aug 06 2003)
 >>> Python/Zope Products & Consulting ...         http://www.egenix.com/
 >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ...        http://python.egenix.com/
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