[Python-Dev] Build Notes for building trunk with Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition

[Paul Moore]

On 23/11/2007, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:
> I've a preliminary patch for distutils.msvccompiler at
> http://bugs.python.org/issue1455. I haven't applied the patch because
> it's not backward compatible with VC 7 and VS 6. We haven't yet agreed
> how to address backward compatibility.

I looked at this, and it seems like more of a change than is really
needed. But it's a LONG time since I looked at the distutils compiler
stuff.

I think that the VC7 stuff has provision for checking the registry
first, then looking for one specific key
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 would be the
VS 2008 equivalent) and if it's there but no others, asking the user
to run vsvars.bat (and then relying on PATH being set right).

Something like that might work for VS 2008 as well.

> I really like to throw out the old junk to have a clean script. Maybe I
> could leave the old msvccompiler alone and put the new code into
> distutils.msvc9compiler?

That might work. I'm not sure if throwing the old stuff out is OK. As
long as we have a VC6 directory (however unmaintained it may be) I'd
say we need the equivalent distutils support.

Paul.