Python was built with VC 7.1.

used in cygwin and mingw32. (Reported by Michael Droettboom)

After some more reflection (and no negative feedback), I am reverting the
original patch and applying my version, cygwinccompiler.py-shared.diff,
instead.

My reasons are the following:

1. support for older toolchains is retained
2. support for new toolchains (i.e., ld -shared) is added

The goal of my approach is to avoid breaking older toolchains while adding
better support for newer ones.

The cygwinccompiler.get_versions() function only handles versions numbers of
the form "x.y.z".  The attached patch enhances get_versions() to handle "x.y"
too (i.e., the ".z" is optional).

This change causes the unnecessary "--entry _DllMain@12" link option to be
suppressed for recent Cygwin and Mingw toolchains. Additionally, it directs
recent Mingw toolchains to use gcc instead of dllwrap during linking.

Currently, the cygwinccompiler.py compiler handling in
distutils is invoking the cygwin and mingw compilers
with the -static option.

Logically, this means that the linker should choose to
link to static libraries instead of shared/dynamically
linked libraries.

Current win32 binutils expect import libraries to have
a .dll.a suffix and static libraries to have .a suffix.
If -static is passed, it will skip the .dll.a
libraries. This is pain if one has a tree with both
static and dynamic libraries using this naming
convention, and wish to use the dynamic libraries.

The -static option being passed in distutils is to get
around a bug in old versions of binutils where it would
get confused when it found the DLLs themselves.

The decision to use static or shared libraries is site
or package specific, and should be left to the setup
script or to command line options.

    suggested by PEP 291.

[#413582] g++ must be called for c++ extensions
[#454030] distutils cannot link C++ code with GCC

topdir = "Lib/distutils"

* bcppcompiler.py
  (BCPPCompiler.create_static_lib): Fixed prototype, removing extra_preargs
  and extra_postargs parameters. Included target_lang parameter.
  (BCPPCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter.

* msvccompiler.py
  (MSVCCompiler.create_static_lib): Fixed prototype, removing extra_preargs
  and extra_postargs parameters. Included target_lang parameter.
  (MSVCCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter.

* ccompiler.py
  (CCompiler): New language_map and language_order attributes, used by
  CCompiler.detect_language().

  (CCompiler.detect_language): New method, will return the language of
  a given source, or list of sources. Individual source language is
  detected using the language_map dict. When mixed sources are used,
  language_order will stablish the language precedence.

  (CCompiler.create_static_lib, CCompiler.link, CCompiler.link_executable,
   CCompiler.link_shared_object, CCompiler.link_shared_lib):
  Inlcuded target_lang parameter.

* cygwinccompiler.py
  (CygwinCCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter.

* emxccompiler.py
  (EMXCCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter.

* mwerkscompiler.py
  (MWerksCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter.

* extension.py
  (Extension.__init__): New 'language' parameter/attribute, initialized
  to None by default. If provided will overlap the automatic detection
  made by CCompiler.detect_language(), in build_ext command.

* sysconfig.py
  (customize_compiler): Check Makefile for CXX option, and also the
  environment variable CXX. Use the resulting value in the 'compiler_cxx'
  parameter of compiler.set_executables().

* unixccompiler.py
  (UnixCCompiler): Included 'compiler_cxx' in executables dict, defaulting
  to 'cc'.
  (UnixCCompiler.create_static_lib): Included target_lang parameter.
  (UnixCCompiler.link): Included target_lang parameter, and made
  linker command use compiler_cxx, if target_lang is 'c++'.

* command/build_ext.py
  (build_ext.build_extension): Pass new ext.language attribute
  to compiler.link_shared_object()'s target_lang parameter. If
  ext.language is not provided, detect language using
  compiler.detect_language(sources) instead.

* command/config.py
  (config._link): Pass already available lang parameter as target_lang
  parameter of compiler.link_executable().

Always use _setup_compile() to do the grunt work of processing
arguments, figuring out which files to compile, and emitting debug
messages for files that are up-to-date.

Use _get_cc_args() when possible.

Fixes a bug for Solaris pkgtool (bdist_pkgtool) that would have
prevented it from building subpackages.

This is a conservative version of SF patch 504889.  It uses the log
module instead of calling print in various places, and it ignores the
verbose argument passed to many functions and set as an attribute on
some objects.  Instead, it uses the verbosity set on the logger via
the command line.

The log module is now preferred over announce() and warn() methods
that exist only for backwards compatibility.

XXX This checkin changes a lot of modules that have no test suite and
aren't exercised by the Python build process.  It will need
substantial testing.

   with 1.5.2

Use != instead of <> since <> is documented as "obsolescent".
Use "is" and "is not" when comparing with None or type objects.

implementations.  Details:
  * replace 'link_shared_object()', 'link_shared_lib()', and
    'link_executable()' with 'link()', which is (roughly)
    the union of the three methods it replaces
  * in all implementation classes (UnixCCompiler, MSVCCompiler, etc.),
    ditch the old 'link_*()' methods and replace them with 'link()'
  * in the abstract base class (CCompiler), add the old 'link_*()'
    methods as wrappers around the new 'link()' (they also print
    a warning of the deprecated interface)

Also increases consistency between MSVCCompiler and BCPPCompiler,
hopefully to make it easier to factor out the mythical WindowsCCompiler
class.  Details:
  * use 'self.linker' instead of 'self.link'
  * add ability to compile resource files to BCPPCompiler
  * added (redundant?) 'object_filename()' method to BCPPCompiler
  * only generate a .def file if 'export_symbols' defined

and is much better documented to boot.

  * use self.debug_print() for debug messages
  * uses now copy.copy() to copy lists
  * added 'shared_lib_extension=".dll"', ... , this is necessary if you
    want use the compiler class outside of the standard distutils build
    process.
  * changed result type of check_config_h() from int to string

  - added big comment describing possible problems
  - look for and react to versions of gcc, ld, and dlltool; mainly
    this is done by the 'get_versions()' function and the CygwinCCompiler
    and Mingw32CCompiler constructors
  - move 'check_config_h()' to end of file and defer calling it until
    we need to (ie. in the CygwinCCompiler constructor)
  - lots of changes in 'link_shared_object()' -- mostly seems to be
    library and DLL stuff, but I don't follow it entirely

More reformatting by me.
Also added some editorial comments.

major ports of GCC to Windows.  Contributed by Rene Liebscher, and quite
untested by me.  Apparently requires tweaking Python's installed config.h
and adding a libpython.a to build extensions.