> Dan added the comment:
>
> Guys, this looks really bad and inconveniences a lot of users. You install the latest MinGW and Distutils from their default location, try using them on **anything that requires compilation**, and get the cryptic gcc -mno-cygwin error (after having to edit the obscure distutils.cfg, of course).
>
> Aren't Python / distutils supposed to be cross-platform? It's already hard enough to find distutils / pip setup instructions for Windows, shouldn't they at least **work**? After removing -mno-cygwin from cygwincompiler.py, I get another obscure -mdll error. This is ridiculous.
Yes . This is reason to pack many changes in one archive 
"issue12641-modernize_cygwin&mingw_compilers.tar.gz 
<http://bugs.python.org/file29030/issue12641-modernize_cygwin%26mingw_compilers.tar.gz>", 
i.e. to remove all checks for tools used in previous millеnium.

My oldest compilers are :
a)
i386-mingw32msvc-gcc (GCC) 3.4.5 (mingw special)
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
b)
gcc.exe (GCC) 3.4.5 (mingw-vista special r3)
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Check for -m{no-}cygwin flags is optional. I can not found reason this 
patch to be applied, as with implementation of compiler customization 
this is for developer guide.

Roumen