[Develop] building a windows build environment

[will]

zooko wrote:
> For what it is worth, the wiki [1] is wrong when it says that  
> "Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 (2003) because it's the only compiler the  
> official Win32 build of Python officially supports".  Python does not  
> officially support any compiler, and the warning message that Python  
> used to emit claiming that Visual C++ 7.1 is required has been fixed  
> in recent builds of Python to claim that any compiler which produces  
> compatible binaries is required.

I think you're mistaken here.  According to the docs, in Python 2.5, 
extensions need to be compiled using the same compiler that was used to 
compile Python.  Since the official Win32 release of Python 2.5 is 
compiled with VC, then extensions that work with the official release 
have to be compiled with the same compiler:

http://docs.python.org/ext/building-on-windows.html

When you say "recent builds", which versions of Python are you referring 
to?


> I use cygwin gcc with the "-mno-cygwin" flag to build http:// 
> allmydata.org -- a decentralized storage grid -- and it works fine.   
> You just have to put "compiler=mingw32" in your distutils config  
> file, as described in our README.win32 [2].
> 
> I haven't yet attempted to build Miro.

There's a page in the wiki that walks through building Miro using FOSS 
tools:

https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/BuildingMiroWithMinGW

I'm not sure what the status is, but I think it only sort of works and 
there are still issues with the process.  Paul would know more.  If you 
want to help us get that working, that'd be really awesome.  It's 
possible other people on this list are currently working on this.

/will