MinGW and Python

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Brian Elmegaard wrote:
> What I don't understand is that it is not possible to distribute a
> python compiled with gcc for windows. The main reason I saw in this
> thread is that python uses mfc. So python requires api access, I
> guess. 

You misunderstood. Python does not use MFC. PythonWin (for example)
does. That has a lot of implications which are hard to understand
if you are not familiar with Windows programming and the C library
mess on Windows.

It would certainly be possible to distribute a gcc-compiled python.
However, what is the point in doing so? Cygwin already includes
a gcc-compiled Python, for Windows:

http://cygwin.com/packages/python/

> Once I asked about distutils here. The answer was that I had access to
> the source so I could just extend it. After messing around I found I
> couldn't because I don't have msvc.

That is simply not true. You can build the entire Python interpreter
with Cygwin (but you don't need to, because there is a precompiled
version), and you can build extensions for the python.org binary
using MingW.

Regards,
Martin