[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer

[Moore, Paul]

From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido@python.org]
> > If this means that those of us with VC6, and with no plans/reasons =
to
> > upgrade can no longer build our own extensions, this would be a
> > disaster.

> Part of the offer was:

> | Potentially we can even figure out how to enable anyone to
> | build Python using the freely downloadable compilers I mentioned
> | above...

Which is good news (don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see Microsoft
supporting open source projects in this way). But wouldn't that imply
unoptimised builds?

I just checked:

>cl /O2
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Standard Compiler Version 13.00.9466 for =
80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1984-2001. All rights reserved.

cl : Command line warning D4029 : optimization is not available in the
standard edition compiler

So, specifically, if PythonLabs releases Python 2.3 built with MSVC7,
and I want to build the latest version of PIL, (maybe because Fredrik
hasn't released a binary version yet), do I have no way of getting
an optimised build (I pick PIL deliberately, because I guess that image
processing would benefit from optimisation, and in the past, PIL =
binaries
have been relatively hard to obtain at times)?

That's the problem I see, personally. I have VC6 because my employer =
uses
Visual Studio for Visual Basic development. But VB has changed so much =
in
the transition to .NET, that I don't believe they will ever going to =
VS7.
So I will have to remain with VS6 (I'm never going to buy VS7 myself, =
just
for this sort of job).

Paul.