[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer

[Alex Martelli]

On Tuesday 06 May 2003 10:23 pm, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I should mention that on re-reading Nick's email, it's clear that he's
> offering to donate copies of Visual C++ 2003, so that's the latest.
> I've invited him to respond directly to the comments and questions.
>
> In any case, it looks like it may be best to wait until after 2.3 is
> released, although if there's time I wouldn't mind playing a bit with
> 2003.  (Hmm... if it really doesn't work on Win98 I have a problem.)

Me too -- a BAD one, since I do just about all of my "windows" work
these days with win4lin under Linux on my desktop box (cheap, fast,
convenient), or on an old Acer Travelmate 345T laptop, and both only
support Win98 -- the only "modern" Windows version I have around is
in the dualboot of a far-too-heavy Dell laptop which came with Win/XP
(so I didn't entirely remove it when installing Linux as the main OS, just
shrank it as much as I could in case I ever needed something in it)...

It WOULD be deucedly inconvenient to have to install Win/XP and keep
it booted just to be able to build Python extension binaries for Windows...!-(

Why a command-line compiler shouldn't be able to run on just about any
version of its OS really escapes me.  Maybe a clever move to force us
laggards to upgrade whether we want to or not...?-(


Alex