[Python-Dev] Developing/patching ctypes

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Thomas Heller wrote:
>>FWIW, ctypes doesn't even build on a Windows AMD64 machine. It wants to
>>use the Windows x86 FFI code, which does not compile with the AMD64
>>compiler.
> 
> 
> On such a machine probably other source files should be used.  I have no such
> machine - is it possible to build the 64-bit version on a 32-bit machine (with
> the platform SDK)?

Indeed, this is possible. I don't know of anybody who does so, so far,
but in principle, the procedure is described in PCbuild/readme.txt. In
essence, you install the platform SDK and vsextcomp, and then build the
ReleaseAMD64 solution setting.

OTOH, the distutils included with Python 2.5 also honor SDK environments
(again), so if you install the platform SDK, open an IA64 or AMD64 build
environment, and run upstream's setup.py, it /should/ just use the
compiler, header files, etc in the path. If that would help, I could
provide you with a Python 2.5 MSI file (for x86), to run distutils, and
get the 2.5 headers.

OTTH, a lot of things don't work on Win64, so people could probably
readily accept the lack of ctypes.

Regards,
Martin