The latest version of Mingw binutils, 2.18.50.20080109, uses a 4-part version number which distutils does not like (StrictVersion only allows for 3 parts). The attached patch fixes this, simply by using LooseVersion (the version number has already been checked to be a series of numbers in the regex check just previous). Can this be fixed for 2.6/3.0, as it is likely that the new binutils will become common while these versions of Python are current?