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

[Stephan Tolksdorf]

One reason for not switching to VC 8, which hasn't yet been explicitly 
mentioned here, is that MinGW does not yet easily support linking to the 
msvcr80 runtime library. Some C extension modules, for instance those in 
SciPy, are primarily developed under Linux with GCC and hence are most 
easily built on Windows with MinGW. If the official Python distribution 
was linked to msvcr80.dll, many extension modules probably could not be 
built "out of the box" on Windows (with MinGW) anymore.

The 64bit compiler in VS2005 is pretty handy, though.

Regards,
   Stephan