[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer

[Neil Schemenauer]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I can see advantages and disadvantages of moving to VC 7; I'm sure the
> VC 7 compiler is more standard-compliant and generates faster code,
> but a disadvantage is that you can't apparently link binaries built
> with VC 6 to a program built with VC 7, meaning that 3rd party
> extensions will have to be recompiled with VC 7 as well.

Can distutils use (or be made to use) the free command line VC 7 tools?
Also, does this affect whether extensions can be compiled by Mingw?  It
would be nice if people could continue building extensions on Windows
using free tools.

  Neil