I'm a newbie to Python; various packages I've used in the past (Lyx, LilyPond and Inkscape, to name a few) have bundled Python with them for various scripting needs, and Cygwin also had an install lying around, so when I started to use Mercurial (also Python) I decided that I'd consolidate all of these installations into a single Windows installation for general use, as well as for me to properly learn the language.
Whoo, it's been a journey. The primary problem involves binary extensions to the Python interpreter itself, which Mercurial uses. The only C compiler I have on my machine is Visual Studio 2005 Express, but Python's binary distribution was compiled with VS 2003, so the installer refuses to compile the package. I understand that Python 3 uses VS 2008, but that's no good for me as it will probably break all of the scripts. So, I'm trying to figure out what I should do. Mercurial's binary distribution was built using MingW, and I do have Cygwin lying around but I'd like to go for the "native" solution for the most speed. If I use MingW, I might as well use their pre-packaged binary. I could recompile Python with MSVC 2005, but I expect that will be its own can of worms. ActiveState is closed source and appears to have the wrong MSVC dependencies. All my troubles could apparently be fixed if I could acquire a copy of VS 2003, but Microsoft has made it incredibly difficult to find the download for it (I don't think it exists). Any suggestions? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
