[Python-Dev] VS 2010 compiler

[Paul Moore]

On 25 September 2015 at 16:35, INADA Naoki <songofacandy at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can use "Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4".
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8279
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 12:24 AM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal
> <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>>
>> As I understand it, the MS VS2010 compiler is required (or at least
>> best practice) for compiling Python extensions for the python.org
>> Windows builds of py 3.4 and ?[1]
>>
>> However, MS now makes it very hard (impossible?) to download VS2010
>> Express ( or Community, or whatever the free as in beer version is
>> called).
>>
>> I realize that this is not python-dev's responsibility, but if there
>> is any way to either document where it can be found, or put a bit of
>> pressure on MS to make it available, as they have for VS2008 and
>> py2.7, that would be great.
>>
>> Sorry to bug this list, I didn't know where else to reach out to.

On 29 September 2015 at 16:20, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> It sounds like we don't expect MS t help out in this case, but at least we
> can better document what users need to do, and how to do it -- and NOT with
> a "kludge together an open-source compiler and cross your fingers" approach.

I'm not sure why INADA Naoki's answer above wasn't sufficient for you?
You need to have the SDK compilers on your PATH (by running the
relevant environment setting command) and you need to set the
environment variable DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1 (this latter bit of
information is hard to find documented, admittedly, but pretty well
known).

That basically gives you a Visual Studio 2010 equivalent environment.
You'll still have all sorts of *other* problems building extensions on
Windows, but unless I'm missing something important in what you were
saying, getting a compiler isn't the issue.

Paul