[PythonCE] Building under Visual Studio 2005 for Devices

[Christopher Fairbairn]

Hi,

>If it is possible to modify the PCBuild8 project files so that Python can be 
>built for both desktop Windows and Windows CE then yes, this may well be the 
>simplest option. However, if Windows CE would require separate project files 
>then I think it would be better to adapt the SCons scripts.

I have had a quick play around with getting a build working using the Visual Studio 2005 compilers and have managed 
to get a version compiled on my machine via the SCons scripts. It appears to be running fine on my PDA.

A brief summary of what I needed to do.

1) Modified msevc.py to change some of the tool names (cl.exe vs clarm.exe) and command line arguments as required 
for the VS2005 compilers. At present I also hardcoded some of the file paths required rather than writing the code to 
reliably find them in the registry etc.

2) Tweaked a few conditional compile statements throughout the source code (about two or three from memory) due to 
the conditional expressions being incorrect due to the use of the VS2005 compiler during WinCE builds. For instance, 
the following condition found within pythonrun.c is now slightly incorrect.

     /* Special signal handling for the secure CRT in Visual Studio 2005 */
     #if defined(_MSC_VER) && _MSC_VER >= 1400

This condition includes code which is specific to the desktop runtime environment (but now evaluates to true due to 
me using the same version of the compiler), so ideally it needs a further condition added to avoid it including the 
code when targeting the WinCE platform with this compiler version.

If I took the time to clean up and complete these patches would there be interest in including support for building 
PythonCE with Visual Studio 2005?

Thanks,
Christoher Fairbairn

PS: When I ran SCons it built the Python25.dll, Python25.exe and Python25.zip files. However it didn't build the cab 
file. I notice there is code within the 'SConstruct' file which appears to be designed to automate the cab building 
process (I manually ran cabwiz.exe on the inf file), how do I run this script?