[Python-Dev] mingw support? (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Sun Aug 8 11:05:22 CEST 2010

Am 08.08.2010 03:27, schrieb Greg Ewing:

Nick Coghlan wrote:

This used to be more of an issue because MS didn't provide a decent free compiler for their platform. These days (since the release of Visual Studio Express), we expect that people willing to use (or support) a closed OS can cope with also using the free-as-in-beer closed compiler provided by the vendor of that OS. The problem with the MS "free" compilers is that it's only a temporary freedom. They have a habit of withdrawing older versions when newer ones become available. Together with their other obnoxious habit of changing the C runtime in incompatible ways with every release, the result is that extensions for versions of Python older than N years can no longer be compiled with any legally-available free MS compiler.

However, this is out of scope for the question at hand. Compiling extensions with mingw is fairly well supported, and people contribute small patches when it breaks.

The OP was asking for compilation of Python itself with mingw, for which this MS policy hasn't caused problems - I do have all the compilers available to me that I need to do that.

Indeed, MSDN subscribers can still access older compiler versions for quite some time after Microsoft stopped otherwise distributing the product.

Regards, Martin

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