Marc-Andre Lemburg <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be better to have distutils tell the user about the
> possible options, instead of guessing and then possibly compiling
> extensions which later on don't import or import, but don't work
> as expected ?

That would be an option, yes.


> Regarding the latest patch: This is not the right approach, since
> find_vcvarsall() is supposed to return the path to the vcvarsall.bat
> file and not an architecture specific setup file. It is later
> called with the arch identifier, which the arch specific setup files
> don't check or use.

The patch does not change anything for Visual Studio Pro. In Visual Studio
Express (+SDK) vcvarsall.bat is broken, so the architecture specific setup
files have to be used (they also work with a superfluous parameter).


> Also note that vcvarsall.bat can take these options:
>
>    x86 (default), x64, amd64, x86_amd64, ia64, x86_ia64
>
> The x86_* options setup the cross compilers.

I think the patch covers all architecture specific files that are
present in the Visual Studio Express + SDK setup.

Visual Studio Pro is protected from all changes by checking for
the presence of the file bin\amd64\vcvarsamd64.bat. This
could probably be done more elegantly by using some obscure
registry value.



As Thorsten mentioned, another option would be to copy bin\vcvars64.bat
to bin\amd64\vcvarsamd64.bat if the latter is not present.

This is harmless, but it is perhaps not really the business of Python
to mess with existing installs.