folks, hi, this is a fairly important issue for python development interoperability - martin mentioned that releases of mingw-compiled python, if done with a non-interoperable version of msvcrt, would cause much mayhem. well, compiling python on mingw with msvcr80 _can_ be done; using it can also be a simple matter of creating a python.exe.manifest file, but i can't actually do any testing because it doesn't work under wine. so, pending any further advice and guidance from anyone which allows me to successfully proceed, i'm not going to continue to compile - or release - python2.5 *or* python2.6 builds (when i get round to that) using msvcr80 or msvcr9X. one issue in favour of this decision is that the DLL that's produced by the autoconf build process is "libpython2.5.dll.a" - not "python2.5.dll". it has a different name. it should be abundantly clear to users and developers that "if name equals libpython2.5.dll.a then duh build equals different". additionally, the setup.py distutils all goes swimmingly well and lovely - using libpython2.5.dll.a. the only issue which _is_ going to throw a spanner in the works is that people who download win32-built precompiled c-based modules are going to find that hey, "it don't work!" and the answer will have to be "go get a version of that module, compiled with mingw, not MSVC". of course - if python for win32 ENTIRELY DROPPED msvc as a development platform, and went for an entirely free software development toolchain, then this problem goes away. thoughts, anyone? l.
