[Python-Dev] Fwd: Broken link to download (Mac OS X) (original) (raw)

Paul Rudin paul at rudin.co.uk
Wed Apr 14 23:51:17 CEST 2010

Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> writes:

On 14 April 2010 07:37, Paul Rudin <paul at rudin.co.uk> wrote:

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:

The major difference in the "do it yourself" attitude is that Mac user get a compiler for free, as part of the operating system release, whereas for Windows, they have to pay for it (leaving alone VS Express for the moment). JOOI why ignore the express versions of the MS compilers? All (I think) MS compilers are available for free in command line versions - it's the GUI tools you pay for. I believe that the express editions don't include some of the advanced optimisations (profile guided optimisation rings a bell) which are used to build the official binaries. So if the binaries were built using Express Edition, they would be somewhat slower. That is just my recollection, however - it may be out of date or wrong. Paul.

I could be wrong too. However I think I had two things confused (it's been a while since I've done any windows development). There are two different suites of free compilers from MS. There's the windows sdk, which includes a command line toolchain and the express edition of VS which (essentially) is a cut down version of the commercial version of VS.

Some info about the windows sdk versions is here <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd146047.aspx> and about versions - including Express - here (at least for VC++) <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hs24szh9%28VS.90%29.aspx> although that's a little old.

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