Download Microsoft C/C++ compiler for use with Python 2.6/2.7 ASAP

[Alf P. Steinbach /Usenet]

* Martin v. Loewis, on 07.07.2010 21:56:
>>>> Perhaps (if it isn't intentional) this is a bug of the oversight type,
>>>> that nobody remembered to update the macro?
>>>
>>> Update in what way?
>>
>> I was guessing that at one time there was no PyMem_Malloc. And that it
>> was introduced to fix Windows-specific problems, but inadvertently
>> without updating the macro. It's just a guess as to reasons why the
>> macro uses malloc directly.
>
> It might indeed be that the function version was introduced specifically
> for Windows. However, the macro was left intentionally: both for
> backwards compatibility, and for use inside Python itself.
>
>>>> Except for the problems with file descriptors I think a practical
>>>> interim solution for extensions implemented in C could be to just link
>>>> the runtime lib statically.
> [...]
>>
>> When I wrote "link the runtime lib statically" that was an alternative
>> to the usual link-as-DLL.
>
> Ok, I lost the thread. When you said "a practical interim solution"
> you were talking about what problem? I thought the discussion was
> about the need to link with the same DLL version as Python.

The main problem that the required MSVC redistributables are not necessarily 
present on the end user's system.


>> It wouldn't make sense to link the runtime lib statically as an
>> alternative to linking it statically.
>
> However, it would surely make sense to link with a different DLL than
> the one that Python links with, assuming that would actually work.
>
>> As for linking to a different /version/ of the CRT, if you really mean
>> that, I think that's difficult. It's not necessarily impossible, after
>> all there's STLPort. But I think that it must at the very least be
>> rather difficult to do with Microsoft's tools, for otherwise people
>> would have employed that solution before, and so I wouldn't trust the
>> result, and wouldn't waste the time trying.
>
> It's actually straight-forward (or used to be, until they came up with
> the SxS madness). It was actually the case that people did so
> unexpectingly, and it seemed to work fine, except that it crashed when
> passing FILE*. Then we started explaining that mixing CRTs is risky.

Oh.

Well then. :-)


Cheers,

- Alf

-- 
blog at <url: http://alfps.wordpress.com>