[Python-Dev] Moving Python 3.5 on Windows to a new compiler (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sat Jun 7 06:49:24 CEST 2014

On 7 June 2014 14:01, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:

Why not just define Python 2.8 as Python 2.7 except with a newer compiler? I cannot see why that would be massive undertaking, if changing compiler for 2.7 is neccesary anyway. A reminder that this was brought up a few months ago, as a proposal by the stackless team, as they wanted to use a newer compiler for binaries. IIRC, there was a pretty resounding "don't do that" from this list. Makes sense to me -- we have how many different binaries of 2.7 on how many platforms, with how many compilers? Sure, python.org has been nicely consistent about what compiler (run time, really) they use to distribute Windows binaries, but the python version has NOTHING to do with what compiler is used. (for hat matter there is 32 bit and 64 bit 2.7 on Windows ...)

Supported by python-dev? We have two: 32-bit and 64-bit, both depending on the Microsoft C runtime, and both published as binary installers on python.org. That's it.

I think, at the time, it was thought that pip, wheel, and the metadata standards should be extended to allow multiple binaries of the same version with different compilers to be in the wild. those projects have had bigger fish to fry, but maybe it's time to get ahead of the game with that, so we can accommodate this change. It's already getting hard to find VS2008 Express, and building 64 bit extensions is s serious pain.

That was a largely independent discussion, noting that if we come up with a mechanism for dealing with Linux distro variances, it may also be useful for dealing with Windows C runtime variances.

Regards, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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