On Feb 9, 1:48 pm, "siggi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > @Ben Sizer
Lucky I spotted this... > As a Python (and programming ) newbie allow me a - certainly naive - > question: > > What is this time consuming part of recompiling an extension, such as > Pygame, from source code to Windows? Is it a matter of spare time to do the > job? Or do you have to wait for some Windows modules that are necessary for > compiling? The problem is something like this: - Python extensions written in C require recompilation for each new version of Python, due to Python limitations. - Recompiling such an extension requires you to have a C compiler set up on your local machine. - Windows doesn't come with a C compiler, so you have to download one. - The compiler that Python expects you to use (Visual Studio 2003) is no longer legally available. - The other compiler that you can use (MinGW) is requires a slightly convoluted set of steps in order to build an extension. Hopefully in the future, some of those convoluted steps will be fixed, but that requires someone putting in the effort to do so. As is often the case with Python, and indeed many open source projects, the people who are knowledgeable enough to do such things usually don't need to do them, as their setup already works just fine. -- Ben Sizer -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
