Building CPython

[BartC]

I'm interested in playing with the CPython sources. I need to be able to 
build under Windows, but don't want to use make files (which rarely work 
properly), nor do a 6GB installation of Visual Studio Express which is 
what seems to be needed (I'm hopeless with complicated IDEs anyway).

Is it possible to do this by using mingw-gcc to compile the .c files of 
the Python sources one by one, or is it one of those complicated 
projects where some of the source is generated as it goes along?

I thought I'd start with the source file containing Py_Main and continue 
from there, but some modules compile and some don't, obscure errors that 
I don't want to investigate unless it's going to be worthwhile (ie. 
eventually ending up with a python.exe that can run simple .py programs).

-- 
Bartc