Building Python 2.5.2 for Itanium

[Christopher]

Hello,

  A tool that we use needs to be ported to Itanium.  It wsa written
for Python 2.5.2, and so I was happily using the Itanium version of
that release.  However, as I have gotten deeper into the port, I see
that ctypes was not included with the Itanium Python 2.5.2 release.

  I need to compile that module for that release and platform, but I
have been unable to discover which MS compiler version and runtime was
used to generate the binaries.  My understanding is that Python 2.5.2
in general uses Visual Studio 2003, but MS does not appear to have
shipped an Itanium compiler with that version of VS.

  I know that there is an Itanium compiler in VS2K5 Team System, and
also a pre-release version was shipped with the Windows 2003 SP1
Platform SDK.  However, the compiler in the SDK appears to basically
be an earlier version of the VS2K5 compiler.

  When I run setup.py build, the distutils die b/c it is apparently
not the right compiler version.

  I am basically looking for some direction w/r to the compiler
environment needed to build modules loadable by Python 2.5.2,
Itanium.

  Thanks!
   -={C}=-