Using GNU C complier as the "default" windows complier

[Bill Tutt]

cygwin isn't thread safe at this moment in time.
If anything, Python should be compiled using mingw32 instead of cygwin.
Esp, in order to get the Win32 extensions to be useful.

However.... I have no idea if the Win32 extensions actually can be compiled
successfully using mingw32 as a substantial portion of them are C++, and
even if they could be compiled, there would be binary incompatability
problems due to using C++. (C++ mangling is different for all C++
compilers...) So given those two things, and neither Mark, I, or anybody
else atm seems to care enough to bother trying to see if it'll work. The
binary compatability problem is the biggest problem though. If a MSVC
compiled Python install can't make use of a mingw32 Win32 extension DLL (or
vice versa) then even bothering with trying becomes counter productive.
(unless your willing to invest time in submitting changes to the source code
to remove the C++ mangling issues) i.e. Turn all exported C++ objects into
COM objects or something so you can just use COM vtbls to communicate.
Needless to say, thats a lot of work that I'd rather not do. (I expect Mark
won't be to gung ho to do that work either... :) )

Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Werner Fouche [mailto:wfouche at mindspring.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 3:59 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Using GNU C complier as the "default" windows complier
> 
> 
> 
> "Mike Callahan" <mcalla at home.com> wrote in message
> news:ma4W3.7794$Ur4.223420 at news.rdc1.tn.home.com...
> > This a question from a newbie but I was thinking...why 
> doesn't the default
> > Python code for windows use the GNU C complier for windows 
> instead of the
> MS
> > complier. Would it be possible to distribute the GNU 
> package along with
> the
> > Python package and thus make it easier to compile, extend, and embed
> Python,
> > use freeze, etc? I know it would take some work, but it 
> seems it would
> make
> > windows Python a lot more like unix Python. Just a thought...
> >
> >
> 
> I had the same idea on the weekend. So I installed Cygwin
> (http://www.cygnus.com/cygwin) on my NT system and after running
> "./configure" got Python to compile and run. However, I could 
> not get Python
> threads to work.
> 
> 
> 
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