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

Sturla Molden sturla at molden.no
Fri Aug 13 23:44:21 CEST 2010

Enthought (32-bit) ships with a mingw gcc compiler configured to build extensions. Hmm. Including a gcc seems like a lot of overhead, not at least for the need to provide sources as well.

A lighter solution would be to include an importlib for the correct CRT as well as for Python, and make sure distutils link with both for mingw. For example we cannot use mingw for 64 bit extensions to Python 2.6 because libpython26.a is missing from Python and mingw-w64 don't have libmsvcr90.a. If Python shipped with both, there would not be a missing import library for the CRT and no confusion as to which CRT to link.

For Python 2.5 there also was a CRT licensing issue for py2exe, but that disappaired when MS provided download links for the Visual Studio redistributables. I think this also contributed to a motivation for a plain mingw build of Python 2.5, as it would take the CRT licensing issue away from py2exe. But as of Python 2.6 this is not a problem anymore. Now it is sufficient to direct the user to Microsoft's free CRT download. Everybody might not be aware of that.

Sturla

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