distutils on Windows with VC++ 8

["Martin v. Löwis"]

wandabq at gmail.com schrieb:
> I'm trying to install two different packages which wrap C or C++ code
> and which make use of distutils.build_ext, which barfs because my only
> compiler is too new.  Trying this both on Python 2.4.3 and 2.5.
> Evidently there is a requirement that the compiler used to build the
> C/C++ in the installation must be the same as was used to build
> Python?  Am I understanding that correctly?  

Yes.

> What's the workaround?

There are several work-arounds, but they all come down to
"get a copy of the one of the supported compilers". The options
are:
- get a copy of VS 2003 on Ebay
- use cygwin/mingw (should work for C, might not work for
  C++ if you use MFC or some other MS-compiled library)
- find the VS 2003 Toolkit; Microsoft took it off the net,
  but Google may still be able to help

Regards,
Martin