[Python-Dev] Moving Python 3.5 on Windows to a new compiler

[Nick Coghlan]

On 7 June 2014 14:01, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>>
>> Why not just define Python 2.8 as Python 2.7 except with a newer compiler?
>> I cannot see why that would be massive undertaking, if changing compiler
>> for 2.7 is neccesary anyway.
>
>
> A reminder that this was brought up a few months ago, as a proposal by the
> stackless team, as they wanted to use a newer compiler for binaries. IIRC,
> there was a pretty resounding "don't do that" from this list. Makes sense to
> me -- we have how many different binaries of 2.7 on how many platforms, with
> how many compilers? Sure, python.org has been nicely consistent about what
> compiler (run time, really) they use to distribute Windows binaries, but the
> python version has NOTHING to do with what compiler is used. (for hat matter
> there is 32 bit and 64 bit 2.7 on Windows ...)

Supported by python-dev? We have two: 32-bit and 64-bit, both
depending on the Microsoft C runtime, and both published as binary
installers on python.org. That's it.

> I think, at the time, it was thought that pip, wheel, and the metadata
> standards should be extended to allow multiple binaries of the same version
> with different compilers to be in the wild. those projects have had bigger
> fish to fry, but maybe it's time to get ahead of the game with that, so we
> can accommodate this change. It's already getting hard to find VS2008
> Express, and building 64 bit extensions is s serious pain.

That was a largely independent discussion, noting that if we come up
with a mechanism for dealing with Linux distro variances, it may also
be useful for dealing with Windows C runtime variances.

Regards,
Nick.

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