[Python-Dev] mingw32 and gc-header weirdness

[Nick Coghlan]

Paul Moore wrote:
> 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.

For runtime compatibility purposes, mingw is no worse than using
versions of MSVC other than the one that was used to build Python (i.e.
primarily making sure you use the correct memory management APIs and not
trying to call the FILE* APIs).

If there are other things that cause mingw to get structure sizes wrong
then I don't see a major problem with a config check or some #ifdef'ery
to work around it. A patch added to a tracker item would be a necessary
starting point for that idea though.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------