[Python-Dev] Python 2.4 extensions require VC 7.1?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Scott Dial wrote:
> I don't recall the discussion vividly, but I think the reasoning was 
> something like "because it still works." Maybe I remember wrong, but 
> this is not a compelling argument en lieu of it being hard to get a hold 
> of the toolkit. If there is some kind of legwork involved with getting 
> python moved to VS2005, then I'll volunteer..

There were several reasons: it's the same compiler that was used to
compile Python 2.4, so authors of Python extension modules typically
already have a copy. Switching to VS 2005 would require people to
get that first, and it would require people to have three releases
of VC installed just to build modules for Python 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5.

Another reason is that I consider VS 2005 buggy, I hope that some
of the breakage that Microsoft has done to the C library is reverted
in a future release. VS2005 managed to break compatibility with
C89 and C99 in a way that made Python fail to start up, also, it
was possible to have the CRT abort just by calling the builtin open
with the wrong arguments. There is now a work-around for that breakage,
but still, I don't trust that VS 2005 is a good product.

I'm hoping that Python can skip VS 2005 entirely, and go straight
to VS 2007 (or whatever it will be called) for 2.6.

Regards,
Martin