Download Microsoft C/C++ compiler for use with Python 2.6/2.7 ASAP

[Christian Heimes]

> The main problem that the required MSVC redistributables are not necessarily 
> present on the end user's system.

It's not a problem for Python anymore. It took a while to sort all
problems out. Martin and other developers have successfully figured out
how to install the CRT for system wide and local user installations. A
system wide installation installs the CRT in the side by side cache
(WinSxS). A local installation keeps the msvcrt90.dll and the
Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest next to the python.exe. Python extensions no
longer embed a manifest so they share the CRT from the python.exe process.

In order to ship a standalone exe you have to keep the CRT next to your
exe. This should work for py2exe binaries as well. At our company we
install our application stack entirely from subversion including Python
2.6.5, Sun JRE and lots of other stuff. This works perfectly fine for us
even for servers without the MSVCRT redistributable.

Christian