Compiling Extension Modules Under Windows

[Michael Foord]

Andrew Durdin <adurdin at gmail.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.2755.1094103635.5135.python-list at python.org>...
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 11:15:29 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > mensanator at aol.com <mensanator at aol.com> wrote:
> >    ...
> > 
> > I predict no need for tweaking.  I'm not sure what the support for the
> > MS SDK compiler is currently -- maybe somebody with more current Windows
> > knowledge can chime in?  It used to be that the free C compiler had no
> > optimization, thus the resulting gmpy would be substantially slower, but
> > I don't even know if that is still currently the case or not.
> 
> No: "Microsoft C/C++ Optimizing Compiler and Linker.  These are the
> same compiler and linker that ship with Visual Studio .NET 2003
> Professional!"
> 
> --from the (free-of-charge) Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 page at
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/


Can someone pelase clarify this for me.
Will having this compiler allow python distutils to automagically
compile extension modules without complaining it needs MSVC7 *and*
without tweaking distutils....  ?? (some hope really !!)

If not - what is the magic needed in distutils to make it use it ?
Is the quality of machine code emitted by this compiler any 'better'
than GCC - is this a matter of fact or opinion ?

The difficulty of compiling extensions for windows is still a 'python
wart'. If one goes through the various incantations necesary to use
gcc under mingw then it 'just works' for python 2.3 but it's still
tricky for the newbie to set up and I've heard rumblings that it might
not be possible for 2.4 (which I'm sure is wrong but there we go).

Regards,


Fuzzy

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html