On 29 October 2014 15:31, Nathaniel Smith
You can use Express editions of Visual Studio.
IIUC, the express edition compilers are 32-bit only, and what you actually want are the "SDK compilers": https://github.com/cython/cython/wiki/64BitCythonExtensionsOnWindows
These are freely downloadable by anyone, no msdn subscription required, but only if you know where to find them!
AFAICT the main obstacle to using MSVC to build python extensions (assuming it can handle your code at all) is not anything technical, but rather that there's no clear and correct tutorial on how to do it, and lots of confusion and misinformation circulating.
Would it help if I wrote a document explaining how to set up the MS compilers (free and paid for) to allow building of Python extensions? There are a few provisos: 1. A lot of it will be pretty trivial: "If you have Vistal Studio (full edition), install it. Done." 2. It will be out of date very fast as the situation for Python 3.5+ will be trivial across the board. 3. I don't have anywhere particularly authoritative to host it (maybe the Python Wiki?) and it could easily get lost in the huge swamp of variously outdated, over-complicated, or otherwise alternative documents available. Ideally I'd like someone to suggest an "official" location I could use. I don't want to do this if it won't be useful, as it'll take me a bit of effort to confirm the process for the only non-trivial scenario (64-bit Python 3.3/3.4 with free tools). But if people think it would help, that's fine, I volunteer. Paul PS Even if I don't get positive feedback, I may just say "to heck with it" and do it anyway, because it *is* so trivial :-) I just won't promise.