[Python-Dev] mingw support?

[Case Vanhorsen]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Sturla Molden <sturla at molden.no> wrote:
>> Terry Reedy:
>
>>    MingW has become less attractive in recent years by the difficulty
>> in downloading and installing a current version and finding out how to
>> do so. Some projects have moved on to the TDM packaging of MingW.
>>
>> http://tdm-gcc.tdragon.net/
>
>
> MinGW has become a mess. Equation.com used to have a decent installer, but
> at some point they started to ship mingw builds with a Trojan. TDM looks
> OK for now.
>
> Building 32-bit Python extension works with MinGW. 64-bit extensions are
> not possible due to lacking import libraries (no libmsvcr90.a and
> libpython26.a for amd64). It is not possible to build Python with mingw,
> only extensions.
>
> I think it is possible to build Python with Microsoft's SDK compiler, as
> it has nmake. The latest is Windows 7 SDK for .NET 4, but we need the
> version for .NET 3.5 to maintain CRT compatibility with current Python
> releases.
>
> Python's distutils do not work with the SDK compiler, only Visual Studio.
> Building Python extensions with the SDK compiler is not as easy as it
> could (or should) be.

Based on hints here:

http://docs.python.org/distutils/apiref.html?highlight=sdk#module-distutils.msvccompiler

I've been able to build GMPY and MPIR using just SDK compiler. For an
example, see

http://code.google.com/p/gmpy/source/browse/trunk/win_x64_sdk_build.txt

I agree that it should be easier but it is possible.

casevh
>
> One advantage of mingw for scientific programmers (which a frequent users
> of Python) is the gfortran compiler. Although it is not as capable as
> Absoft or Intel Fortran, it is still decent and can be used with f2py.
> This makes the lack of 64-bit support for Python extensions with mingw
> particularly annoying. Microsoft's SDK does not have a Fortran compiler,
> and commercial versions are very expensive (though I prefer to pay for
> Absoft anyway).
>
> I do not wish for a complete build process for mingw. But support for
> 64-bit exensions with mingw and distutils support for Microsoft's SDK
> compiler would be nice.
>
> Sturla
>
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