Manipulating large blobs in Python

[Tim Stone]

I'm working on a module that will manipulate large blobs.  I'm using a C 
dll to allocate big blocks of memory, using PyMem_Malloc, which is 
working quite well up until I try to manipulate a blob that exhausts 
Python's heap.  I'm guessing that to increase the heapsize, I'm going to 
have to recompile python... (??)  Am I on the right track?  If so, can 
you steer me toward some instructions on how to do that compile?  I'm a 
command-line make kind of dude, and I don't see any of that kind of 
stuff in the source distribution.  I see .vcproj xml-ish files... do I 
need some version of visual studio ide to do the windows compile?  It'd 
be great if there was some way to increase the heapsize without all that 
bother :)

Tim Stone