[Python-Dev] Python should be easily compilable on Windows with MinGW

[Alexander Walters]

No.

Visual Studio is a solid compiler suit, mingw is a jenky mess, 
especially when you try and move to 64bit (where I don't think there is 
one true version of mingw).  I'm sorry that Visual Studio makes it very 
hard for you to contribute, but changing THE compiler of the 
distribution from the platform compiler, especially when we FINALLY got 
a stable abi with it, is going to be a non starter.

Compiling on MinGW for your own edification is fine, but that's not the 
build platform for windows python, nor should it be. Contributions are, 
and should continue to be, tested against Visual Studio.

On 2/26/2016 05:12, Mathieu Dupuy wrote:
> Hi.
> I am currently working on adding some functionality on a standard
> library module (http://bugs.python.org/issue15873). The Python part
> went fine, but now I have to do the C counterpart, and I have ran into
> in several problems, which, stacked up, are a huge obstacle to easily
> contribute further. Currently, despite I could work, I can't go
> further
> on my patch.
>
> I am currently working in very limited network, CPU and time
> ressources* which are quite uncommon in the western world, but are
> much less in the rest of the world. I have a 2GB/month mobile data
> plan and a 100KB/s speed. For the C part of my patch, I should
> download Visual Studio. The Express Edition 2015 is roughly 9GB. I
> can't afford that.
>
> I downloaded Virtualbox and two Linux netinstall (Ubuntu 15.10 and
> Fedora 23). Shortly, I couldn't get something working quickly and
> simply (quickly = less than 2 hours, downloading time NOT included,
> which is anyway way too already much). What went wrong and why it went
> wrong could be a whole new thread and is outside of the scope of this
> message.
> Let me precise this : at my work I use many virtualbox instances
> automatically fired and run in parallel to test new deployments and
> run unittests. I like this tool,
> but despite its simple look, it (most of the time) can not be used
> simply by a profane. The concepts it requires you to understand are
> not intuitive at first sight and there is *always* a thing that go
> wrong (guest additions, mostly).(for example : Ubuntu and Virtualbox
> shipped for a moment a broken version of mount.vboxsf, preventing
> sharing folder to mount. Despite it's fixed, the broken releases
> spread everywhere and you may encounter them a lot in various Ubuntu
> and Virtualbox version. I downloaded the last versions of both and I
> am yet infected. https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12879). I could do
> whole new thread on why you can't ask newcomers to use Virtualbox
> (currently, at least).
>
> I ran into is a whole patch set to make CPython compile on MinGW
> (https://bugs.python.org/issue3871#msg199695). But it is not denying
> it's very experimental, and I know I would again spent useless hours
> trying to get it work rather than joyfully improving Python, and
> that's exactly what I do not want to happen.
>
> Getting ready to contribute to CPython pure python modules from an
> standard, average mr-everyone Windows PC for a beginner-to-medium
> contributor only require few megabytes of internet and few minutes of his
> time: getting a tarball of CPython sources (or cloning the github CPython
> mirror)**, a basic text editor and msys-git. The step further, if doing
> some -even basic- C code is required, implies downloading 9GB of Visual
> Studio and countless hours for it to be ready to use.
> I think downloading the whole Visual Studio suite is a huge stopper to
> contribute further for an average medium-or-below-contributor.
>
> I think (and I must not be the only one since CPython is to be moved
> to github), that barriers to contribute to CPython should be set to
> the lowest.
> Of course my situation is a bit special but I think it represents
> daily struggle of a *lot* of non-western programmer (at least for
> limited internet)(even here in Australia, landline limited internet
> connections are very common).
> It's not a big deal if the MinGW result build is twenty time slower or
> if some of the most advanced modules can't be build. But everyone
> programmer should be able to easily make some C hacks and get them to
> work.
>
> Hoping you'll be receptive to my pleas,
> Cheers
>
>
> * I am currently picking fruits in the regional Australia. I live in a van
> and have internet through with smartphone through an EDGE connection. I can
> plug the laptop in the farm but not in the van.
> ** No fresh programmer use mercurial unless he has a gun pointed on his
> head.
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