Nick Coghlan wrote:
This used to be more of an issue because MS didn't provide a decent free compiler for their platform. These days (since the release of Visual Studio Express), we expect that people willing to use (or support) a closed OS can cope with also using the free-as-in-beer closed compiler provided by the vendor of that OS.
The problem with the MS "free" compilers is that it's only a *temporary* freedom. They have a habit of withdrawing older versions when newer ones become available. Together with their other obnoxious habit of changing the C runtime in incompatible ways with every release, the result is that extensions for versions of Python older than N years can no longer be compiled with any legally-available free MS compiler. If you're talking about pragmatism, I think this situation causes very pragmatic difficulties. -- Greg _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
