[New-bugs-announce] [issue5235] distutils seems to only work with VC++ 2008 (9.0)

[Eric Swenson]

New submission from Eric Swenson <eric at swenson.org>:

Building python extensions using distutils in python 2.6 with only VC++ 
2005 installed no longer works.  

distutils appears to require VC++ 2008.  The documentation on building 
extensions for Python 2.6 seems to suggest that VC++ 2008, while 
preferred, is not required and that it should be possible to build 
extensions with VC++ 2005.

distutils appears to look for vcvarsall.bat in the VC++ 9.0 directories. 
It decides to use 9.0 based on the return value of 
distutils.msvc9compiler.find_build_version, which returns 9.0 -- 
presumably because python 2.6 was built on VC++ 9.0 (2008).  Why is does 
it no longer search for older versions of VC++ (like 2005)?  Is this a 
bug in distutils?  

If VC++ 2008 (9.0) is required to build extensions, then the python 2.6 
web site should make this clear.

----------
assignee: tarek
components: Distutils
messages: 81833
nosy: eswenson, tarek
severity: normal
status: open
title: distutils seems to only work with VC++ 2008 (9.0)
versions: Python 2.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue5235>
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