John: in the current versions of the toolchain, Python's configure fails for me. I follow steps 1..3 of "Steps to date". Then running ./configure fails saying that it does not work. I then tried alternatively these three approaches:
1. set PATH to include /mingw/mingw/bin
2. set CC to /mingw/mingw/bin/gcc.exe
3. set CC to /c/mingw/mingw/bin/gcc.exe
Even though I can run gcc -v just fine, configure fails with
configure:3593: checking whether the C compiler works
configure:3615: /mingw/mingw/bin/gcc conftest.c >&5
gcc.exe: error: CreateProcess: No such file or directory^
configure:3619: $? = 1
configure:3657: result: no
So apparently, mingw has some problem mapping the file name back to a Win32 path.