[Distutils] Compiler support for VC++ 2005

[Paul Moore]

On 19/01/07, Howard Lightstone <howard at eegsoftware.com> wrote:
> I am unable to rebuild things using disutils using Visual Studio
> 2005.  I get reports of "No compiler found".
>
> Since VC8 is the only thing available in the future (from
> Micro$soft), is there any progress toward updating distuils to
> allow this compiler (and its own locations....) to be supported?

If you want to build extensions with VS 2005, you need to build Python
with that compiler. At present, the Windows binaries of Python are
built with VC 7.1 (VS 2003). Sadly, MS no longer make the free VC 7.1
compiler ("Toolkit compiler") available, otherwise you could use that
(you may still be able to find it somewhere, or persuade someone to
send you a copy).

So, unless you're building your own Python executable, you can't use
VS 2005 regardless of distutils support.

On the other hand, mingw gcc is fully supported, if that's an option for you.

Paul.