[Python-Dev] Visual studio 2005 express now free

[Alex Martelli]

On Apr 24, 2006, at 1:24 AM, Paul Moore wrote:

> On 4/24/06, Neil Hodgson <nyamatongwe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Martin v. Löwis:
>>
>>> Apparently, the status of this changed right now: it seems that
>>> the 2003 compiler is not available anymore; the page now says
>>> that it was replaced with the 2005 compiler.
>>>
>>> Should we reconsider?
>>
>>    I expect Microsoft means that Visual Studio Express will be
>> available free forever, not that you will always be able to download
>> Visual Studio 2005 Express. They normally only provide a particular
>> product version for a limited time after it has been superceded.
>
> No. Martin means that http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/
> no longer points to a downloadable version of MSVC which includes the
> optimizer, and generates VC 7.1 compatible binaries.
>
> This means that unless you've already downloaded it, or it's
> acceptable for someone else to host it, there's once again no way to
> build Python with free tools :-(

I've posted a couple of tinyurl's that may help (no time right now to  
try everything out again myself).

>
> (Is it worth the PSF asking MS if it's acceptable for python.org to
> host a copy of the toolkit compiler? As MS donated copies of MSVC 7.1
> to the Python project, they may be willing to consider this...)

Small as the chance may be, it's still most definitely worth asking,  
so that everything doesn't suddenly break the instant MS wants to  
withdraw the URLs that currently still work.  Also, we'd need the  
ability to redistribute the 1.1 SDK, as the 2.0 one seems to lack the  
key msvcrt.lib for x86.


Alex