Just a little reminder: Microsoft has withdrawn VS2008 in favor of VS2010. The express version is also unavailable for download. >:((
We can still get a VC++ 2008 compiler required to build extensions for the official Python 2.6 and 2.7 binary installers here (Windows 7 SDK for .NET 3.5 SP1): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=71DEB800-C591-4F97-A900-BEA146E4FAE1&displaylang=en Download today, before it goes away! Microsoft has now published a download for Windows 7 SDK for .NET 4. It has the VC++ 2010 compiler. It can be a matter of days before the VC ++ 2008 compiler is totally unavailable. It is possible to build C and Fortran extensions for official Python 2.6/2.7 binaries on x86 using mingw. AFAIK, Microsoft's compiler is required for C++ or amd64 though. (Intel's compiler requires VS2008, which has now perished.) Remember Python on Windows will still require VS2008 for a long time. Just take a look at the recent Python 3 loath threads. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
