Can I Develop C Extensions For Python 2.7 Through 3.1 On Windows *without* Installing Visual Studio 2008?

I'm aware that Python extensions on Windows typically have to be built with the same version of Visual Studio used to compile Python itself, and I'm further aware that Python 2.7 t

Solution 1:

I can suggest a few possible solutions to your problem. From potentially the easiest, to probably the hardest:

1. Just use Visual Studio 2013 to compile your extension modules. For this to work your extension module mustn't access any C runtime objects created by the Python interpreter, nor may it pass any C runtime objects it creates to the interpreter. In particular you can't use any FILE * or file descriptor objects provided by Python. You can still read and write to files in your module, just not files that Python has opened.

2. Uninstall Visual Studio 2013, install Visual Studio 2008, reinstall Visual Studio 2013. As silly as this sounds it's probably going to be a quicker and lot less frustrating than either of the following solutions. This will let you build extension modules pretty much normally and you won't have to worry about what C runtime objects you use.

3. Use mingw32 and employ various hacks to get it to work. This page explains how one person got it to work: https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg09473.html

4. Copy the appropriate msvcrt*.lib file from VS 2008 installed on another machine. Manually edit your linker options to use this library instead of VS 2013's msvcrt*.lib of the same name. If that doesn't work, copy the include files and other libraries as well, and modify your compiler and linker options to use them instead. If that still doesn't work, copy the VS 2008 command line compiler and all of its dependent DLLs, set the PATH correctly, and then modify your build process to use that compiler instead.