Python under Windows: free cl.exe?

[Alex Martelli]

"Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:T9gg7.137082$Xr6.749458 at news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> J.Jacob:
>
> > Where can we download the (free commandline version) microsoft C++ 6.0
> > compiler cl.exe and nmake.exe?  We need it if we want to do
> > extending/embedding C(++) and many 3rd party Python packages want you to
> use
> > cl.exe and nmake.exe
>
>    I'm not sure if the tools you get with the .NET Beta SDK are sufficient
> for building Python as I think it uses Visual C++ projects rather than
> makefiles and so may need Visual Studio to build them. The SDK includes
> Microsoft C/C++ 13.0 rather than C/C++ 12.0 which came with Visual C++
6.0.

Maybe not to build Python itself, but we've had reports on this group
of those compilers being sufficient to build extensions via distutils'
setup.py.  So it's presumably only an issue of making the needed
makefile[s] from the .dsw/.dsp and it might work...


>    Buying one of the magazines that feature the .NET Beta SDK as cover
discs
> (such as a recent (August?) MSDN magazine) is a much better idea as it
saves
> a lot of download time and also gets you a beta of Visual Studio .NET.
Dunno
> if VS.NET is capable of building Python.

Haven't tried, but I've experimentally used VS.NET on other big and
complicated projects made with VC++6 and it worked fine.


Alex