[Python-Dev] progress: compiling python2.5 under msys (specifically but not exclusively under wine) with msvcr80

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

this is a progress report on compiling python using entirely free
software tools, no proprietary compilers or operating systems
involved, yet still linking and successfully running with msvcr80
assemblies.  manifests and rc files, which are compiled to internal
resources, have been added.
various sections which are uniquely identifed by _MSC_VER >= 1400 etc
have had to be enabled with corresponding MSVCRT_VERSION >= 0x0800 -
in particular, signal handling (PyOS_getsig()).

currently, under wine with msvcr80, there looks like there is a bug
with a common theme related to threads, but here's a short list:
test_array.py is blocking, test_bz2.py is hanging and test_cmd_line.py
causes a segfault; test_ctypes is _still_ a bundle of fun. for those
people who use native win32 platforms who are compiling up this code,
you should have better luck.

significantly, the wine developers have been absolutely fantastic, and
have fixed several bugs in wine, sometimes within hours, that were
found as a result of running the extremely comprehensive python
regression tests.

the python regression tests are a credit to the collaborative
incremental improvement process of free software development.

i look forward to seeing the same incremental improvement applied to
the development of python, evidence of which would be clearly seen by
the acceptance of one of the following patches, one of which is dated
2003:
http://bugs.python.org/issue3754
http://bugs.python.org/issue841454
http://bugs.python.org/issue3871
http://bugs.python.org/issue4954
http://bugs.python.org/issue5010

for those people wishing to track and contribute to the development of
python for win32 using entirely free software tools, either under wine
or native windows, there is a git repository, here, slightly
illogically named pythonwine because that's where i started from
(cross-compiling python under wine, so i could get at the wine
registry from python).  obviously, since then, things have... moved on
:)

http://github.com/lkcl/pythonwine/tree/python_2.5.2_wine

l.