[Distutils] MSVC7 directories

[Mark Hammond]

> >Just incase it slips under the radar, I have opened a bug
> regarding MSVC7
> >directories.  Specifically, changes I make to the
> directories in the MSVC7
> >GUI are not seen by distutils.  All the details, and a
> patch, is in the bug:
> >
> >http://www.python.org/sf/883969
> >[ 883969 ] distutils doesn't see user-directories set via
> VisStudio 7.1

> Always seemed a bit daft to do this implicitly from the IDE (eg when I
> set things up for stackless my ordinary stuff seems to see the wrong
> paths).

Not sure what you mean here?  I did find it strange that I could not setup
the compiler as I would for any other project on the planet (ie, vie the env
vars that the compiler itself supports), but that was pronounced to be a
feature of distutils, so I dropped it.

> There is special code in there about version >=7 though.
>
>         if self.__version >= 7:
>             key =
> (r"%s\%0.1f\VC\VC_OBJECTS_PLATFORM_INFO\Win32\Director
> ies"
>                    % (self.__root, self.__version))
>         else:
>             key = (r"%s\6.0\Build System\Components\Platforms"
>                    r"\Win32 (%s)\Directories" % (self.__root,
> platform))

Yes, I did see that special code.  My issue is that MSVC7.1 is not storing
these paths in the registry at all.

If you combine these 2 facts together (can't use env vars, MSVC doesn't
store in the registry), it currently seems *impossible* to get MSVC7 to use
an alternative path under distutils.  My patch tries to address this (even
if it seems the wrong one to support to me <wink>)

Can anyone else at least confirm that changing the directories in MSVC7 does
not write the new paths to the registry?  The standard paths seem to be
written there at installation time, but changing paths in DevStudio does not
change these registry values.

Mark.