Question: I've been reading quite a bit about Thrift and it looks like a technology I'd really like to use. I'm having all sorts of trouble building the Windows distribution. I know a patch exists to build a Windows version, however I have not had much luck with this either.

Does anyone know of a pre-built distribution for Windows?

Or any suggestions on how to get the latest version of Thrift built (without turning my Windows machine into a pseudo \*nix box).

Thanks
Rich

Answer: 
Thrift 0.8 now has VS projects for both the compiler and C++ library. Get the snapshot release or the latest off of SVN
<http://thrift.apache.org/download/>

Edit: 0.8 has been officially released and the source is available as a tarball on the download page.

Edit2: The SVN trunk now has a cross-platform sample project under *thrift/contrib/transport-sample*
Yes there is, just download the exe from here:

<http://thrift.apache.org/download/>

exe listed for download there is standalone executable, no installation is needed.

I have used it to generate Smalltalk code, did not test other languages.