[Distutils] Building Python extensions on 64-bit Windows using the SDK compilers

[Paul Moore]

On 24 September 2014 17:24, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> Thanks -- that would be great. But really, why is this so hard? Win64 is
> essentially One platform, and the freely available SDK is ONE compiler
> environment.

If only that were true :-)

What I've found is:

1. Different SDKs are needed for Python 2.7 and 3.3+ (the VS2008/VS2010 split)
2. The v7.0 SDK (Python 2.7) is a bit of a beast to install correctly
- I managed to trash a VM by installing the x86 one when I should have
installed the x64 one.
3. There are bugs in the SDK - the setenv script for v7.0 needs fixes
or it fails.

Agreed, it should be easy. And indeed, it is if you have the full
Visual Studio. But when Python 2.7 came out, the freely available MS
tools were distinctly less convenient to use, and that shows.

It's getting a lot better, and once we start using MSVC 2012 or later
(i.e., Python 3.5+), the express editions include 64-bit support out
of the box, which makes most of the problems go away.

Paul