[Python-Dev] Building Python with Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Paul Moore wrote:
> I hope this is of some use - it would be brilliant if VC 2005 Express
> could be a supported build environment. (Of course, MS have updated
> the CRT again, so binaries built with VC 2005 Express aren't binary
> compatible with extensions built for the standard release... :-( )

It is not really practical to support two build environments fully;
as MS changed the format of the project files again, one would have
to maintain two sets of project files (actually, it would be three
sets, as we keep the VC6 files as well).

So really having the VS2005 files in subversion isn't an option;
trying to make conversion go smooth all the time certainly is a
desirable goal.

Using VS2005 for official builds would only be an option with the
next major release (2.5), and I personally don't see that happening:
AFAICT, it is not that much of a change as VS2003 was (i.e. for
Python, nothing is gained AFAICT); also, I'm getting the impression
that VS2005 has too many bugs (*) to be useful, so I recommend to
skip that release completely, and go then to VS2006 (or whenever
that is release).

Regards,
Martin

(*) besides the really sad changes in the CRT which break ISO C
compliance, pre-release versions of the IDE were really unstable.
That might have improved for the release, of course. In addition,
I'm aware of various problems with .NET 2.0; something that doesn't
Python affect too much, though.