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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T21:12:48+00:00

I have been having a terrible time trying to compile a python extension –

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I have been having a terrible time trying to compile a python extension – hopefully someone can help.

I initially tried executing ‘python.exe setup.py build’ but received the error: ‘Python was built Visual Studio 2003; extensions must be built with a compiler that can generate compatible binaries…”.

So I then downloaded Cygwin, and have tried sending the switch ‘-c mingw32’. A few lines were written into the console – then I get the error message: command ‘gcc’ failed: Permission denied.

I was initially using the Visual Studio 2010 Command Line to do this, but tried with bash and got the same result.

I have spent a considerable amount of time researching the issue, and it appears Cygwin uses symlinks for gcc and g++, and windows doesn’t understand how to handle this.

How exactly can I force setup.py to use gcc-3.exe instead of the gcc.exe symlink?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I know it’s inelegant, but you can rename the symlink and copy gcc-3.exe to gcc.exe. That worked for me when I used Cygwin’s gcc. You might want to switch to the mingw64-i686 (or mingw64-x86_64) package to get gcc 4.5.3, or just install MinGW-w64 separately for compiling under Windows.

    Also, you can permanently configure distuilts in PythonXX\Lib\distutils\distutils.cfg:

    [build]
compiler = mingw32

[build_ext]
compiler = mingw32

[build_clib]
compiler = mingw32
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