[Distutils] How to easy_install from source package with mingw32 on Windows?

[zooko]

(quoting out-of-order)

On Sep 12, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Robert Kern wrote:
> Use a section in your pydistutils.cfg file like this:
>
> [build_ext]
> compiler=mingw32

Thank you very much!


> You can configure it to do so already. Making distutils  
> automatically figure out
> that this is desired and safe is probably more magic than it's worth.

So why isn't the Free Software compiler the default when no compiler  
is specified?  It works fine.  If I understand, there is currently no  
gratis Microsoft compiler available that can be used to produce  
Python modules.

By the way, glancing at the python-dev archives, it appears that  
every time a new version of Python is ready to be released, people  
discover that Microsoft has stopped shipping the version of their  
compiler that was used for the previous version of Python, requiring  
everyone to agree about whether to upgrade to the newest Microsoft  
compiler, or to somehow acquire copies of the old, no-longer-shipped  
Microsoft compiler.  Occasionally, in these long, flamey threads on  
python-dev, one of the participants eventually says "Oh!  I've just  
learned that I can use the Free Software compiler to compile my  
Python modules, so I didn't need to spend all this time attempting to  
acquire an obsolete Microsoft compiler!".

If distutils used the Free Software compiler without requiring  
special configuration, it would be that much easier for folks to  
compile Python modules.

Regards,

Zooko