[Python-Dev] MS VC 7 offer (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 06 May 2003 14:26:07 -0400

A month ago at Python UK in Oxford (which was colocated with C and C++ standardization meetings as well as a general C and C++ users conference) I met with some folks from Microsoft's VC development team, including the project lead, Nick Hodapp. I told Nick that Python for Windows was still built using VC 6. He pointed out that the actual compilers (not the GUI) from VC 7 are freely downloadable.

More recently, Nick sent me an email offering to donate copies of VC 7 to the "key developers". I count Tim, myself and Mark Hammond among the key developers. Is there anyone else who would count themselves among those?

I presume he's offering the pro version, which has a real optimizer, unlike the "standard" version that was kindly donated by Bjorn Pettersen.

I can see advantages and disadvantages of moving to VC 7; I'm sure the VC 7 compiler is more standard-compliant and generates faster code, but a disadvantage is that you can't apparently link binaries built with VC 6 to a program built with VC 7, meaning that 3rd party extensions will have to be recompiled with VC 7 as well. I have no idea how many projects this will affect (don't worry about Zope Corp :-). Maybe we should try to include those 3rd party developers in the deal. (I think Robin Dunn would be affected, wxPython has a Windows distribution.)

If you think this is a bad idea or if you would like to qualify for a compiler donation, please follow up!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)