[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer

[Geoffrey Talvola]

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.

If that's really true then my vote would be against switching to VC 7.

My company uses VC 6 extensively and we have no plans to upgrade to VC 7.
Our Python programs make extensive use of .pyd's compiled with VC6, and we
also embed the Python interpreter within our C++ programs.  It would be
_very_ painful for us to upgrade our world to VC7, and if Python switched to
VC 7, we'd probably be forced to simply compile our own custom version of
Python (and the 3rd-party extension DLLs we use) with VC6.

So there's one data point for you...

- Geoff