Plain distutils won't detect it. It would be easy enough to fix 2.7.9, but "update Python" is a big/impossible ask for a lot of people, whereas "update setuptools" is easy and also covers Python 2.6 and <3.3.

The compiler installer can't set the keys that distutils looks for without losing the per-user installation, and it may also corrupt actual installs of Visual Studio. A monkey patch via setuptools was the best way to handle this - covers pip and Cython and can be ported to other libraries that care but avoid setuptools.

Now that we have a patch, there's very limited value in fixing 2.7.9, IMO. But I'm willing to be convinced - we can always add a version check to the setuptools patch.

Cheers,
Steve

Top-posted from my Windows Phone