MinGW and Python

[Ross Ridge]

sturlamolden wrote:
> I seem to vaguely remember that MinGW was going to get its own CRT. And
> unless it does, MinGW is a defect compiler for legal resons. It cannot
> be legally used.

That is simply not true.

> Microsoft has designated the CRT that MinGW links a system file,
> against which no application should link.

While they may not recommend it anymore, Microsoft no more prohibits
applications linking against MSVCRT.DLL than KERNEL32.DLL.

> Insted they have asked that a CRT is distributed together
> with any program that depends on it. If you program needs
> msvcrt.dll, you should redistribute msvcrt.dll and place
> a copy in your program's install directory.

No, this is not how Microsoft recommends installing MSVCRT.DLL.
Because it is a system DLL it should be, after doing appropriate
version checking, installed in the system directory.  See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvc60/html/redistribvc6.asp

> When you compile with MinGW, you are not allowed to to that.

That's why MinGW applications don't include MSVCRT.DLL in their
distributions.  There's no reason to do so, since it's installed
already on virtually all Windows systems.  Even on systems like Windows
95 where MSVCRT.DLL wasn't originally a system DLL, it's usually
already been installed as a consequence of installing some other
application.

> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326922

This article describes how MSVCR70.DLL, MSVCR71.DLL and MSVCR80.DLL
should be installed.  Since these DLLs, as the article points out,
aren't system files they should differently than MSVCRT.DLL.

                                Ross Ridge