Incomplete documentation of Windows build dependencies

The build dependencies documentation for Windows x64 states that the build requires the Windows SDK 7.1 for 64bit Python 3 and the following build environment configuration:

SET DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1
SET MSSdk=1
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Setup\WindowsSdkVer.exe" -q -version:v7.1
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SetEnv.cmd" /x64 /release

However, this does not work for Python >= 3.5 which is compiled with MSVC 14.0 instead of 10.0.

Fortunalety, the build seems to work “out of the box” without any further configuration (took me a while to figure that out, though). The AppVeyor build takes this into account (in build_tools/appveyor/run_with_env.cmd) but it is mentioned nowhere in the documentation.

I’m not sure whether the Windows SDK is still required or if Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 is sufficient.

[albertcthomas]

Actually only doing

SET DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64

works.

[phausamann]

Thanks @albertcthomas for the update, I can confirm that it builds fine on my system with the same environment setup.