@Steve Great, so what needs to be done so that I as a package developer can do `pip install windows-build-system`, `python setup.py bdist_wheel` and it actually creates a wheel? (which AFAICT is the same problem).

My interest is precisely as a package developer. I've spent far far too much time fighting compilers on Windows (many days) and I don't want to do that any more. Every time I come across a new machine, I need to re-establish the current way to do things, which invariably doesn't work properly because I can't find the SDK to download, or the SDK installation doesn't include things any more, or some other reason which I can't work out. On Linux, everything is basically wonderful - I notice no difference between pure python packages and extensions packages.