Testacular install fails, no vcbuild.exe

Question

I'm trying to install Testacular (using nmp) on a Windows 8 Professional (64 bit) laptop, but it fails when it tries to install socket.io as part of this process. The error I get is

Could not load the Visual C++ component "VCBuild.exe".
To fix this, 1) install the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK, 2) install Microsoft Visual 
Studio 2005 or 3) add the location of the component to the system path if it
is installed elsewhere.

I apparently have .NET framework 3.5 installed (it's checked under the add/remove Windows components bit in Control Panel), although I've not managed to find a vcbuild.exe. I tried installing an old copy of VS2005 but this resulted in a different error about an invalid project (.vcproj) file.

Can anyone suggest how I might get this working? Weirdly it installed fine on my work computer, which is very similar to the one on which it won't install (they're both 64 bit Win 8 Pro).

Planksheer

I'm getting the same issue on Windows 7 – Yamen

It seems like it's not uncommon, but I can't find a solution. I've tried to ask about it in the Socket.io Google group a couple of times, but my question never seems to get approved. – Planksheer

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue. I fixed this by adding this to environmental variable PATH: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcpackages so that it can find vc build.

Steffy

Yes. Toby. I got the same message as yours, but somehow by adding the environmental variable fixes the issue. – Steffy

Thanks for this, it actually got me past this error, only to stumble at a new one! – Planksheer

I'm not interested in installing visual studio, surely there is a way around this? It's frustrating that developing with nodejs even requires anything from microsoft other than a dll somewhere. – Squireen

@Squireen - I totally agree with you, it's far from ideal at the moment. – Yesima

@Yesima Yep. I gave up and went back to using a Linux Based Operating System, where stuff just works (tm). – Squireen

I don't have the file path C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcpackages, perhaps because I'm using 8.0? I created the file path C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8.0\VC\vcpackages\vcbuild.exe but it didn't solve the problem. – Jackshaft

I tried installing c++ redistributable for python but it's not good enough. Now I'm getting this error: vcbuild.exe : error VCBLD0010 – Reefer

how do I add a environmental variable PATH ? – Acree

I don't understand why the --msvs_version flag was not working for me, but this fixed it – Corney

Answer 2

In Visual Studio 2010, the command line tool vcbuild.exe is replaced by msbuild.exe. So, please make sure you have right Visual studio.

Brail

I have Visual Studio 10... do i need to uninstall it and install 9 ? – Goldberg