Python 2.3 distutils with Mingw C++

[Andrew Gregory]

In Python 2.2, I compiled some C++ code on Windows (MinGW compiler) to
create an extension using distutils and the following setup.py file:

from distutils.core import setup, Extension
setup (name = "_pysimple",
       version = "1.0",
       maintainer = "AG",
       maintainer_email = "xxx at xx.co.uk",
       description = "Sample Python C++ DLL",
       ext_modules = [Extension('_pysimple',
                     
extra_compile_args=['-O2','-march=i586','-malign-double'],
                      extra_link_args=['-mthread'],
                      library_dirs=['C:\\mingw\\lib'],
                      libraries=['supc++'], # if using iostreams etc.
use stdc++
                      sources=['pysimple_wrap.cxx'])])

Provided that certain C++ features such as templates were not used,
this would build ok using the gcc compiler (not g++), as supc++ is
linked to.
Command used is: python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32

In Python 2.3, distutils recognises the .cxx extension as C++ and
tries to compile with
  cc -mno-cygwin -shared etc.
resulting in "cc not found" error message. It should compile with
  c:\mingw\bin\gcc -mno-cygwin -shared etc.
or *much* better
  c:\mingw\bin\g++ -mno-cygwin -shared etc.

The quick fix is to copy the old distutils subdirectory from Python22
into Python23.

Andrew.