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

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 01:09:45 +1000, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> (Paul Moore already covered most of this, but I'll go into a bit more
> detail in a couple of areas)
> 
> On 29 October 2014 00:46, Tony Kelman <kelman at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > Stephen J. Turnbull:
> >> It should be evident by now that our belief is that the large majority
> >> of Windows users is well-served by the current model
> >
> >
> > This is not the case at all in the scientific community. NumPy and SciPy
> > put in a lot of extra work to come up with something that is compatible
> > with the MSVC build of CPython because they have to, not because they're
> > "happy to" jump through the necessary hoops.
> 
> Lots of folks are happy with POSIX emulation layers on Windows, as
> they're OK with "basically works" rather than "works like any other
> native application". "Basically works" isn't sufficient for many
> Python-on-Windows use cases though, so the core ABI is a platform
> native one, rather than a POSIX emulation.

Since some of the context here is scientific use of Python, it might be
a useful bit of perspective to know that, while there are doubtless many
scientists using windows and using the windows native interfaces
happily, the Software Carpentry bootcamps that aim to give scientists
the basic framework for making better use of computers and software and
programming have as one foundation the bash shell, taught on Windows via
git-bash.  That is, the common toolset being taught to scientists (by
Software Carpentry) is the posix one, even on Windows.

--David