I'm currently working at the Cygwin-Compiler class on Win32, there I found a problem with "bdist". When I have build all extensions with my compiler class and then try to use "bdist", the msvc compiler class starts and fails (I don't have it on my machine.) I think there are two problems. First the system seems to check the filedates with the objectfile-extensions of the standard compiler ( msvc ".obj" , cygwin ".o" ). So it doesn't find my object files, and tries to recreate them, but uses a wrong compiler. I think it should be possible to configure the compiler also for "bdist". (If this is already possible? Please explain how.) Also I think "bdist" does a "build" if there aren't already the right files. In this case "bdist" should accept *all* parameters which "build" accepts. The second problem. Why "bdist" doesn't check only the source files against the finished extension modules? Currently it seems to check the source files against the compiled object files. Then there is something else concerning the compiler option. If the user uses help he get the information that he can use the compiler option, but how can he know which compilers(classes) are available. There should be a possibility to get a list. (In ccompiler.py we have such list, we only had print it.) kind regards Rene Liebscher