Thomas Heller schrieb (this was before Python 2.5 had been released):
The _ctypes extension module does currently not even build on Win64.
I'm (slowly) working on this (for AMD64, not for itanium), but it may take a good while before it is stable - It is not even fully implemented currently.
The win64 msi installer installs the ctypes package anyway, but it cannot be imported.
I suggest that it should be removed from the 2.5 win64 msi installers, so that at least, when it is ready, can be installed as separate package.
Then, Martin changed the win64 msi installer to exclude the ctypes package when the _ctypes.pyd extension does not exist because it was not built. In the meantime I have integrated patches (in the trunk) so that _ctypes can be built for win64/AMD64, and does even work. Can these changes be merged into release25-maint? IMO this is low-risk because they contain only small changes to the files in Modules/_ctypes/libffi_msvc, plus *some* changes to support the Windows LP64 model. I would prefer to merge these changes into release25-maint, because I want to also release the standalone ctypes packages from this branch (using it with svn:externals from somewhere else). The official Python 2.5.x win64/AMD64 windows installers should still *not* contain the ctypes package, but they could install it separately. Thanks, Thomas