How to configure python cffi library to use mingw?

Question

Attempting to call cffi.FFI.verify() on windows will produce this error:

distutils.errors.DistutilsPlatformError: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

I want to use mingw to compile instead of msvc. I tried to make distutils use mingw by creating c:\Python27\Lib\distutils\distutils.cfg with

[build]
compiler = mingw32

but this doesn't seem to affect cffi, I still get vcvarsall.bat missing error.

So how can I make cffi use gcc/mingw (or in general other C compiler)?

Endstopped

What does return gcc --version in a Command Prompt ? Is the path to MinGW/bin correctly set in your PATH env. var. ? – Creese

Yes they are. I can invoke gcc (GCC) 4.7.2 from the same cmd prompt I want to run the python script. Windows path contains MinGW/bin dir – Endstopped

Answer 1

Try to reinstall cffi, now that distutils is properly configured. For example using easy_install

easy_install cffi

Or even rebuild & install it from source using MinGW that way :

cd cffi-src-dir
python setup.py config --compiler=mingw32 build --compiler=mingw32 install
cd ..

This will make sure that cffi is correctly setup for use with MinGW... I guess...

Creese

well, using pip or easy_install first fails with a distutils error complaining about a bad "-mno-cygwin" argument. After I remove said compiler argument from distutils/cygwincompiler.py (as per this problem bugs.python.org/issue12641), compilation starts but down in other gcc errors. I'll give up for the moment. – Endstopped

Compiling from sources does not help, because setup.py uses distutils, hence you run into exactly the same issues as with pip or easy_install. BTW, initially I installed cffi by using the unofficial binaries from here lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs. It works if you only use ABI, but when trying to use the API (and hence compile C) it fails as described in my original question – Endstopped