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3.14: Windows on Arm build fails since windows-11-arm migrated to windows-11-vs2026-arm

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
github-actions, python

Research direction

Start with .github/workflows/reusable-windows.yml and inspect how the arm64 job selects MSBuild; then review build.bat and PCbuild/pcbuild.proj for the PreferredToolArchitecture and PlatformToolset interaction. Run the affected Windows Arm64 CI build and confirm that _freeze_module compiles successfully with the native toolchain.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

3.14 build infra OS-windows

The Windows Arm64 jobs in the CI recently started failing on 3.14 (for example). Noted by @StanFromIreland in https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/158188#issuecomment-5837953982: the _freeze_module
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/9def455ebd4017dfbfcf1377137bb949ff2e29c1/PCbuild/pcbuild.proj#L20-L21
can no longer be compiled for PreferredToolArchitecture=x86 and PlatformToolset=v143:

The build tools for Visual Studio 2022 (Platform Toolset = 'v143') cannot be found.

PreferredToolArchitecture=x86 is chosen, because we use the x86 version of msbuild in CI:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\msbuild.exe"

which is chosen by build.bat if no MSBUILD environment variable is set and msbuild is not in the path. [^1]

Compiling the _freeze_module for arm64 on an arm64 host by just using the arm64 version of msbuild would solve this, by e.g. just adding

      env:
        MSBUILD: ${{ inputs.arch == 'arm64' && 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\arm64\msbuild.exe' || '' }}

to

https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/e16b12bb982bc916664850da1d0a78109b2145b8/.github/workflows/reusable-windows.yml#L38-L40
because then PreferredToolArchitecture=arm64 and also the arm64 version of the compiler is chosen.

I think running the _freeze_module natively on an arm64 host is anyway the better fit?

[^1]: noticed already in https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/153668#issuecomment-5304195008

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