[Python-Dev] mingw32 and gc-header weirdness

[Paul Moore]

2009/7/22 Christian Tismer <tismer at stackless.com>:
> Maybe the simple solution is to prevent building extensions
> with mingw, if the python executable was not also built with it?
> Then, all would be fine I guess.

I have never had problems in practice with extensions built with mingw
rather than MSVC - so while I'm not saying that the issue doesn't
exist, it certainly doesn't affect all extensions, so disabling mingw
support seems a bit of an extreme measure.

Having a preprocessor check in the Python headers to check if this bug
is triggered in the actual code, and raising a compile error in that
case, may be an option (but I expect that ensuring such a check is
precise enough would be hard).

Now that VC Express is freely available, the importance of mingw
support is less, but AFAIK many developers cross-compile Windows
binaries on Linux using mingw, or develop on gcc and use mingw to
build on Windows (or Wine) but wouldn't install VC. So removing mingw
support in cases where it does work would cause definite issues for
Windows users relying on prebuilt binaries.

Paul.