which windows python to use?

[Robert Kern]

Don Taylor wrote:
> Robert Kern wrote:
> 
>>>Which C compiler will you be using for the Enthought 2.4 Windows release?
>>
>>Define "using". We build Python with whatever compiler the official build is
>>compiled with. In this case, MSVC 7.<mumble>, I think . For this release, we
>>will ship the latest available gcc available for mingw. Some of the extension
>>modules will be built with this gcc.
> 
> I meant to build Python itself.
> 
> I asked because I was interested in trying your Traits package but could 
> not use it with Python 2.4.  I don't have MSVC 7 and I was intimidated 
> by the prospect of building the CTraits extension with either the free 
> MS toolkit or mingw and munging the dlls to conform to the MSVC 7 formats.
> 
> I just wondered if Enthought's distro for Windows was gcc-based.

The Python interpreter is not. Most of the extension modules we build are.
Building stock-2.4 extension modules using mingw works for the most part. It
certainly does for Traits as we build Traits using mingw. Most extension modules
compiled this way appear to work. There are still some incompatibilities with
C++ modules that use iostream and possibly some C modules that use, IIRC,
ischar() and friends. Until someone fully ports mingw to use msvcr71.dll as its
C runtime, those incompatibilities will remain.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco