Which compiler will Python 2.5 / Windows (Intel) be built with?

[meyer at mesw.de]

Roel Schroeven wrote:
> meyer at mesw.de schreef:
> > * The code created by the Windows GCC is not as good as the one created
> > by the Microsoft compiler
>
> Isn't Python for other platforms built with GCC? Seems to me that if it
> GCC is good enough for other platforms, it's good enough for Windows.

Actually, GCC on Linux does provide worse machine code than say, the
Intel compiler for Linux. This is not a "bug" of GCC, but a feature,
because GCC was created for maximum portability and flexibility, not
for maximum performance on one single platform like the Intel compiler.
But GCC is truly free and can be distributed easily (because it's GPL),
so it is the default compiler for most (if not all) distros at the
moment. Also, there are many free software programs that use special
features of GCC and cannot be compiled using another compiler.

Of course I do acknowledge that often in the real world the IO forms
the bottleneck of a system and the efficiency of the machine code is
somewhat neglegible (other posters pointed that out already).


Markus