Force compiler when running python setup.py install

Question

Is there a way to explicitly force the compiler for building Cython extensions when running python setup.py install? Where setup.py is of the form:

Answer 1

I ended up putting this at the beginning of setup.py to force visual2015

useful when running in a non bat environment and starting vcvarsall from outside is not an option

if sys.platform == 'win32':
    # patch env with vcvarsall.bat from vs2015 (vc14)
    try:
        cmd = '"{}..\\..\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat" x86_amd64 >nul 2>&1 && set'.format(environ['VS140COMNTOOLS'])
        out = subprocess.check_output(cmd, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, universal_newlines=True)
    except:
        print("Error executing {}".format(cmd))
        raise

    for key, _, value in (line.partition('=') for line in out.splitlines()):
        if key and value:
            os.environ[key] = value

    # inform setuptools that the env is already set
    os.environ['DISTUTILS_USE_SDK'] = '1'