[Distutils] Building Python extensions on 64-bit Windows using the SDK compilers

[Jonathan J. Helmus]

On 9/23/2014 5:42 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
> Can anyone give me some advice, please? I am trying to build
> extensions on Windows 64-bit, using the free Windows SDK compilers.
> But I can't find any official documentation on how to do this, and
> everything I have tried so far has failed in frustrating ways. I'm now
> at the point where I appear to be hitting the following bug -
> http://bugs.python.org/issue7511 which has stumped me completely.
> Sadly, as is typical with distutils issues, this one seems to have
> been round for years and there is little or no sign that anyone is
> willing to fix it.
>
> Two questions, really:
>
> * Is there any intention that building extensions with the SDK
> compilers is supported?
> * How do I do it, if so?
>
> Personally, this is of limited relevance, as I have the full version
> of MSVC available. But I'm trying to put together some documentation
> for package developers on how to build Windows wheels, in particular
> using Appveyor to automate the process, with the intention that people
> shouldn't have to jump through hoops to provide wheels, but should
> rather be able to simply use a prebuilt recipe to automate the
> process.
>
> As an alternative, I wonder whether Microsoft would be willing to
> support Appveyor by providing them with access to the full version of
> MSVC (2008 and 2010) for the build workers? Steve - do you know if
> there's any possibility of something like that?
>
> Paul
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
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Paul,

     Some of us from the Scientific Python side of development have been 
using appveyor to build Windows wheels for a few projects.  A demo from 
one of developers of scikit-learn gives a good overview of the process 
we have been using [1].  The Cython wiki also has some information on 
getting the Windows SDK set up correctly for 64-bit compiling [2].  
Personally I was able to get the pacakges I was working on to compile on 
a Windows host using only the Windows SDK compilers following the hints 
available on those to links and a Stack overflow answer on the topic 
[3].  It has been a few months since then but I can try to reproduce my 
work if those links don't provide the answers.

Cheers,

     - Jonathan Helmus

[1] https://github.com/ogrisel/python-appveyor-demo
[2] https://github.com/cython/cython/wiki/64BitCythonExtensionsOnWindows
[3] 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11267463/compiling-python-modules-on-win-x64/13751649#13751649