[Python-Dev] Status of C compilers for Python on Windows

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:
> Ray Donnelly wrote:
>> What is it that you
>> are afraid of if CPython can be compiled out of the box using
>> mingw/MinGW-w64? Why are you fighting so hard against having option.
>
> I'm afraid of users having numpy crash because they're using an MSVC CPython instead of a mingw CPython. I'm afraid of users not being able to use library A and library B at the same time because A requires MSVC CPython and B requires mingw CPython. (I can produce more examples if you like, but the general concern is having a fragmented community, as I said in my previous post.)
>

It might fragment the community to have multiple different binary
distributions. But it ought to be possible for any person/organization
to say "We're going to make our own build of Python, with these
extension modules, built with this compiler, targeting this platform",
and do everything from source. That might mean they can no longer take
the short-cut of "download someone's MSVC-built extension and use it
as-is", but they should be able to take anyone's extension and build
it on their chosen compiler. Having MinGW as a formally supported
platform would make life a lot easier for people who want to test
CPython patches, for instance - my building and testing of PEP
463-enhanced Python was Linux-only, because I didn't want to try to
set up an entire new buildchain just to try to get a Windows binary
going. There's absolutely no need for that to be binary-compatible
with anything else; as long as it'll run the standard library, it'll
do.

ChrisA