[Python-Dev] Linking with mscvrt (original) (raw)

Neil Hodgson nyamatongwe at gmail.com
Thu Feb 9 23:00:10 CET 2006

Martin v. Löwis:

COM really solves all problems people might have on Windows.

COM was partly just a continuation of the practices used for controls, VBXs and other forms of extension. Visual Basic never forced use of a particular compiler or runtime library for extensions so why should Python? It was also easy to debug an extension DLL inside release-mode VB (I can't recall if debug versions of VB were ever readily available) which is something that is more difficult than it should be for Python.

Alas, it is not a cross-platform API. Standard C is cross-platform, so Python uses it in its own APIs.

The old (pre-XPCOM) Netscape plugin interface was cross-platform and worked with any compiler on Windows.

Neil

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