MinGW and Python

[Edward Elliott]

sturlamolden wrote:
> MinGW and Cygwin GCC is actually the same compiler. On Cygwin you can
> remove the dependency on the cygwin dll by compiling with -mno-cygwin.
> But as long as the cygwin dll is there, it creates an overhead for any
> system call. 

Thanks for that very informative post!  To clarify, mingw (aka gcc
-mno-cygwin) has no POSIX layer like cygwin.  Because your post could also
be (incorrectly) interpreted to mean mingw removes the cygwin dll
dependency by just linking it in statically.  But I googled and this is not
the case.

Back to the original point about whether mingw compilation is necessary
given the python compiles under cygwin: Yes, it is.  There can't be an
apples-to-apples comparison between gcc and msvc-compiled python with the
cygwin POSIX layer in the way.

Couldn't you compile the msvc-python code under gcc/mingw?  If the code
sticks to C standards, and mingw can link to native libs, it should work. 
The only problem is if python relies on some msvc-specific weirdness under
msvc.  While there's much weirdness in msvc, I would expect a
cross-platform app like python to stay away from it.