[Python-Dev] Build Notes for building trunk with Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition

[Christian Heimes]

Tim Golden wrote:
> Ah. Thanks for that last bit. I thought this might not build
> without the full VS, so I didn't try poking round for a
> nasm-alike.

I've changed the build_ssl.py script to build openssl for nasm instead
of ml/masm. The MS assembler for x86 is only available in the standard
and professional version. While it's possible to extract it from the SDK
package I don't see the point in installing several hundreds of MB when
less than one MB free a free assembler is more than fine.

> I managed to fudge distutils around sufficiently to build
> the standard Pyrex primes testcase as an extension. I noticed
> that Christian has committed patches to the py3k trunk which
> do useful things with the vcvars.bat file to pick up the
> compiler environment, so I was going to email him privately to
> look at backporting those into 2.6. This, my first experience
> of hacking distutils, felt a little like clambering over a
> construction site, with lots of ungainly "if it's v6; if it's v7"
> stuff obviously reflecting the vagaries of Microsoft's registry
> layout changes over the different compiler flavours.
> 
> For practicality's sake I'd very much like to help get this
> to the point where you can build Python *and* extensions with
> the VS Express compilers (including, critically, the pywin32
> stuff).

I've a preliminary patch for distutils.msvccompiler at
http://bugs.python.org/issue1455. I haven't applied the patch because
it's not backward compatible with VC 7 and VS 6. We haven't yet agreed
how to address backward compatibility.

I really like to throw out the old junk to have a clean script. Maybe I
could leave the old msvccompiler alone and put the new code into
distutils.msvc9compiler?

Christian