distutils on windows

[Andrew Gregory]

Sorry to ask such a trivial question, but if I'm compiling using
distutils
how to I get to see the compiler error messages, as the command window
on Windows NT does not have scroll bars, so they disappear off the top
of the screen?

Tried 
python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 > tmp.txt
(closes file immediately if an error)
and
python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 |more
(syntax error)