Currently 2.7 fails to build on Win32 using PC\VS90\build.bat -e for two reasons:

1. Wrong openssl version: PC\VS9.0 is still at version 1.0.2k, whereas PCbuild/get_externals.bat downloads version 1.0.2o.

2. Building tcl fails with well known "nmakehlp" not found problem. It is caused by the following line in PC\VS90\build.bat: "nmake -f makefile.vc MACHINE=%machine% DEBUG=%debug_flag% INSTALLDIR="%tcltkdir%" clean all". Separate invocations of nmake for "clean" and "all" fix the problem.

I'll provide a pull request for both issues. I hope it is OK to make just a single PR, because the changes are trivial.


Relevant output from PC\VS90\build.bat:

Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 x86 tools.

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.30729.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

===============================================================================
*** Compiler has 'Optimizations'
*** Compiler does not have 'Pentium 0x0f fix'
*** Linker has 'Win98 alignment problem'
*** Intermediate directory will be '.\Release_VC9\tcl_Dynamic'
*** Output directory will be '.\Release_VC9'
*** Suffix for binaries will be ''
*** Optional defines are '-DTCL_CFGVAL_ENCODING=\"cp1252\" -DSTDC_HEADERS -DNDEBUG -DTCL_CFG_OPTIMIZED'
*** Compiler version 9. Target machine is IX86
*** Host architecture is AMD64
*** Compiler options '-W3  -Ot -Oi -fp:strict -Gs -GS -GL  -RTC1 -W3'
*** Link options '-ltcg'
*** Dependency rules are not being used.

Cleaning .\Release_VC9\tcl_Dynamic\* ...
Cleaning ..\win\nmakehlp.obj ...
Cleaning ..\win\nmakehlp.exe ...
Cleaning ..\win\_junk.pch ...
Cleaning ..\win\vercl.x ...
Cleaning ..\win\vercl.i ...
Cleaning ..\win\versions.vc ...
        cl -nologo -c -W3 -W3 -D _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE -D _CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE -Fp.\Release_VC9\tcl_Dynamic\ -O2  -Ot -Oi -fp:strict -Gs -GS -GL -MD -I"
..\win" -I"..\generic" -I"..\libtommath" -DTCL_PIPE_DLL=\"tclpip85.dll\" -DTCL_TOMMATH -DMP_PREC=4 -Dinline=__inline -DTCL_CFGVAL_ENCODING=\"cp1252\" -DSTDC_HEA
DERS -DNDEBUG -DTCL_CFG_OPTIMIZED  -DTCL_USE_STATIC_PACKAGES=0  -Fo.\Release_VC9\tcl_Dynamic\tclAppInit.obj ..\win\tclAppInit.c
tclAppInit.c
Der Befehl "nmakehlp" ist entweder falsch geschrieben oder
konnte nicht gefunden werden.
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'nmakehlp' : return code '0x1'
Stop.

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.30729.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

===============================================================================
*** Compiler has 'Optimizations'
*** Compiler does not have 'Pentium 0x0f fix'
*** Linker has 'Win98 alignment problem'
*** Intermediate directory will be '.\Release_VC9\tcl_Dynamic'
*** Output directory will be '.\Release_VC9'
*** Suffix for binaries will be ''
*** Optional defines are '-DTCL_CFGVAL_ENCODING=\"cp1252\" -DSTDC_HEADERS -DNDEBUG -DTCL_CFG_OPTIMIZED'
*** Compiler version 9. Target machine is IX86
*** Host architecture is AMD64
*** Compiler options '-W3  -Ot -Oi -fp:strict -Gs -GS -GL  -RTC1 -W3'
*** Link options '-ltcg'
*** Dependency rules are not being used.

Installing to 'D:\kruis_F\fg2\stackless\python\PC\VS9.0\..\..\externals\tcltk'
Installing tcl85.dll
Datei tcl85.dll nicht gefunden
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'xcopy' : return code '0x4'
Stop.

New changeset 7b383a57145046a6a6ad6cd26f3139163df07885 by Zachary Ware (Anselm Kruis) in branch '2.7':
bpo-33931: Fix building using PC\VS9.0\build.bat -e (GH-7844)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/7b383a57145046a6a6ad6cd26f3139163df07885

Thanks, Anselm!  I'll leave this open until our VS9 buildbots [1] confirm that they're happy with it, but I suspect since they weren't broken before they won't be affected by this anyway.

[1] http://buildbot.python.org/all/#/builders?tags=%2Bvs9