Michael Colonno wrote:
OK, some progress here. I have two questions: 1) Let's forget about the Intel compiler(s) for the moment and focus on a standard Windows build. Python 2.6 comes with two classes in distutils: msvccompiler.py and msvc9compiler.py. In reading through these, it appears msvc9compiler.py is ideally suited for what I'm trying to do (use VS 2008 tools). Is it possible to select this via command line flags with config --compiler=xxx?
No - python-distutils normally builds extensions with the same compiler as the one used to build python itself. Which means VS 2008 for python 2.6, VS 2003 .Net for 2.5 (except for 64 bits which uses a variant of VS 2005). You *cannot* build an extension with VS 2008 for a python built with VS 2003, for various fundamental reasons.
Any thoughts? This looks like a peculiarity of the VS compiler but I'm not sure. (I tend to prefer the Intel C compiler because it is more "Linux-like" and seems to be happier with cross-platform code.)
Most numpy/scipy developers use gcc compilers on most platforms, so sometimes some things which do not pass with another compiler slip in. It is possible that this is the case here - but I could build numpy with VS 2008 on windows x64 a few weeks ago, so it should only be a relatively small regression. I will look at it, David