[Python-Dev] Supporting Visual Studio 2010

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Am 04.04.2011 22:38, schrieb Brian Curtin:
> Would it be reasonable to begin supporting Visual Studio 2010 for
> Windows builds of 3.3?

Interesting question. The following concerns have played a role in the
past:
- depending on the timing of the next VS release, Python may actually
  want to skip VS 2010, and move right to VS 2012 (say).
- users have expressed concerns that they constantly need to upgrade
  VS releases when developing for Python. With VS Express, that concern
  may be reduced - but you still need to buy a full license if you want
  to support AMD64.
- users have also expressed concerns that old VS versions become
  unavailable; of course, these are different users (since the first
  ones have already bought copies of VS 2008). The counter-argument is
  that you can still get cheap copies on Ebay, but that may be a red
  herring.
- every time this comes up, people also suggest that we should stop
  building with VS, and use gcc in the first place.

> Does it make sense to start this
> process now for a change to 2010?

I'll abstain from a vote here, and I think it essentially comes down to
voting (or somebody putting the foot down saying "I want this now",
which really was the way it worked the last time(s)).

Somebody would need to take charge of this, and fix all the issues that
come up: incompatibilities, generation of backwards-compatible project
files, MSI packaging, getting licenses to buildbot operators.

So if you want to lead this, and the votes are generally in favor,
go ahead. Be prepared to do this *again* before the 3.3 release when
switching to the next VS release (and yes, Microsoft's timing had
been so unfortunate in the past that such a switch would have occurred
just before the first beta release of Python).

> If it's not feasible to release 3.3 from a 2010 build, when might we be
> able to make the change?

If we don't switch for 3.3, we'll definitely switch to VS 2012.

> I'm willing to do the work on this, but I just want to make sure it's a
> worthwhile effort.

See above: it may or may not.

Regards,
Martin