On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Victor Stinner <victor.stin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Windows is not the primary target of Python developers, probably > because most of them work on Linux. Official Python binaries are > currently built by Microsoft Visual Studio. Even if Python developers > get free licenses thanks for Microsoft, I would prefer to use an open > source compiler if it would be possible. So *anyone* can build Python > from scatch. I don't like the requirement of having a license to build > Python. The free version (Visual Studio Express) only supports 32-bit > and doesn't support PGO build (Profile-Guided Optimizations, which are > disabled if I remember correctly because of compiler bugs). > > I know that it's hard to replace Visual Studio. I don't want to do it > right now, but I would like to discuss that with you.
Although I'm not very active around here much anymore, I was primarily working on Windows things within the last few years. While we have a lot of Windows users, we don't have a lot of Windows contributors. The huge amount of churn necessary to make a change away from VS, or the more likely move to make it possible to support both VS and <insert other compiler>, seems like a large amount of work that doesn't turn up much of a benefit. Especially for a platform with constrained developer availability, working software trumps all, so I don't expect that a project like this is going to see the regular contributors shifting their focus away from improving Python as it is. With that said, I do see the benefit of being able to build Python with a free compiler. It would be great for us to be able to say it's always built with free tools, but I'm not sure who's going to make this happen... _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
