[Python-Dev] Switching to Visual Studio 2010

["Martin v. Löwis"]

It seems a number of people are interested that the Python trunk
switches to Visual Studio 2010 *now*. I've been hesitant to agree
to such a change, as I still hope that Python can skip over VS 2010
(a.k.a.  VS 10), and go straight to VS 11.

However, I just learned that VS 11 supposed ready VS 10 project files
just fine, with no need of conversion.

So I'd be willing to agree to converting the Python trunk now. It
will surely cause all kinds of issues, as any switching of Visual Studio
releases has caused in the past.

Since a number of people have already started with such a project,
I'd like to ask for a volunteer who will lead this project. You
get the honor to commit the changes, and you will be in charge if
something breaks, hopefully finding out solutions in a timely manner
(not necessarily implementing the solutions yourself).

Any volunteers?

Regards,
Martin

P.S. Here is my personal list of requirements and non-requirements:
- must continue to live in PCbuild, and must replace the VS 9
  project files "for good"
- may or may not support automatic conversion to VS 9. If it turns
  out that conversion to old project files is not feasible, we could
  either decide to maintain old project files manually (in PC/VS9),
  or just give up on maintaining build support for old VS releases.
- must generate binaries that run on Windows XP
- must support x86 and AMD64 builds
- must support debug and no-debug builds
- must support PGO builds
- must support buildbot
- must support building all extensions that we currently build
- may break existing buildbot installations until they upgrade to
  a new VS release
- must support PCbuild/rt.bat
- should support Tools/msi. If it doesn't, I'll look into it.
- must nearly pass the test suite (i.e. number of additional failures
  due to VS 2010 should be "small")