[Distutils] Compiler support for VC++ 2005

[Paul Moore]

On 03/02/07, Jorge Vargas <jorge.vargas at gmail.com> wrote:
> yes indeed I had a huge fight with mysqldb driver because of this. Since the
> windows version of mysql is compile with VS2003 and python too getting those
> drivers to build with gcc will require recompiling everything and making it
> incompatible with the stock mysql.

You don't need to recompile Python with gcc. Whether you need to
recompile MySQL, I can't say.

> This is something that shock me a lot, why python (the official) on windows
> is build with a tool that is not accessible to all developers. Building
> extensions on windows is just a pain...

I agree that building extensions on Windows can be a real pain. But
it's generally the fault of the 3rd party code, or the extension code,
not of Python itself.

As an example, mod_python used to be a real pain to build, because
Apache (the standard binary) was built with MSVC 6, and Python (the
standard build) with MSVC 7.1. But I believe the mod_python developers
have made some changes, and as a result it *is* now possible to build
mod_python with gcc.

At the end of the day, it can be a real pain to build your own
extensions on Windows. But in my view, the Python developers have made
a good job of easing that pain as much as possible. Whether choosing
to use MSVC 7.1 was a good *political* move, rather than a good
*technical* one, is a different question, and one I don't intend to
get into :-)

Paul.