Error "Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat)"

Question

I've installed Python 3.5 and while running

pip install mysql-python

it gives me the following error

error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat)

I have added the following lines to my Path

C:\Program Files\Python 3.5\Scripts\;
C:\Program Files\Python 3.5\;

C:\Windows\System32;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC

I have a 64-bit Windows 7 setup on my PC.

What could be the solution for mitigating this error and installing the modules correctly via pip.

Purgatory

make sure to upgrade setuptools: pip install --upgrade setuptools see wiki.python.org/moin/WindowsCompilers – Selfpropelled

Use this link to download Visual C++ 2015 Build Tools. It will install Visual C++ 14.0 without installing Visual Studio. After the installation completes, retry pip install and you won't get the error again. – Civilize

sigh it doesn't end here. Channels doesn't work either. My respect for python is dying quickly! – Rawson

Save yourself lots of time and hard drive space and go to this answer first: https://mcmap.net/q/93095/-error-quot-microsoft-visual-c-14-0-is-required-unable-to-find-vcvarsall-bat-quot – Tyratyrannical

Not working for me, I tried all the answer. I am trying to install scrapy, or should I call it crappy. Nothing really works on first try, does it... – Ramberg

@LalitKumarB I know it is against the rules.. but THANK YOU for that link. I always find the microsoft download pages so confusing, but this simple link took all of that away for me. – Forwent

Visual C++ Build tools link is 3Gb for me. – Darwindarwinian

@LalitKumarB It still requires 4GB in all drives. I just installed Visual C++ 14.2 by downloading it from Microsoft's websites but it didn't work for me. I think i need to reset the PC so I can install built tools. – Overabundance

@Forwent Glad it helped. And thanks for sharing your feedback, it helps everyone a lot to know which answer/post/comment is most reliable. – Civilize

@ZeeshanAhmadKhalil What was the error you saw? It would be more helpful if you could post more details about what didn't work for you. It's the same way I figured out the appropriate solution, I had to nail down to the root cause and then come with the best solution. – Civilize

I solved this by removing Python and working with Groovy instead. Python needs a v4. – Inspectorate

@LalitKumarB link doesn't work – Tusk

@AlifRamdani Link works absolutely fine, it downloads visualcppbuildtools_full.exe file – Civilize

For me this method worked, file.bat with these lines: ``` call <your path>\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat SET DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1 SET MSSdk=1 pip install <somelib> ``` – Burrows

@OlegButko Can you please share the steps in more details. – Thackeray

@IrfanHarun snippet.host/tgcu – Burrows

I keep seeing questions about this, and it's always the same version. Why do so many popular packages apparently want to build with the same specific version of Visual Studio, which is several years old? – Bk

Answer 1

Your path only lists Visual Studio 11 and 12, it wants 14, which is Visual Studio 2015. If you install that, and remember to tick the box for Languages → C++ then it should work.

On my Python 3.5 install, the error message was a little more useful, and included the URL to get it from:

error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Get it with "Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools": http://landinghub.visualstudio.com/visual-cpp-build-tools

New working link.

As suggested by Fire, you may also need to upgrade setuptools package for the error to disappear:

pip install --upgrade setuptools

Furr

After doing this, I still had this error. Upgrading setuptools from 28.8.0 to 36.2.7 did the trick. – Rusk

This post also gives additional information on the required visual C++ build tools: scivision.co/python-windows-visual-c++-14-required – Greenhaw

@davidsheldon, where exactly should I tick the box for Languages->C++? – Venal

pip install --upgrade setuptool didn't work for me, but python -m pip install --upgrade setuptool did – Cesaro

The most important thing to do is the UPGRADE SETUPTOOLS bit – Cholera

for me upgrade tools didn't help ;( – Darwindarwinian

I don't understand. It only requires Visual C++ 14 then why we have to install whole Visual Studio? – Overabundance

Are you running these pip commands in visual studio (which seems like it is powershell)? Or are you running them in conda. I tried both. Conda gave me the same error, and visual studio doesn't recognize conda or pip commands – Comic

@Rusk you are the MAN bro! your comment should have been the accepted answer. Almost banging my head against a wall to figure out why installing the latest VS C++ build tools (for VS Studio 2019) wasn't working, despite it being a newer version. Turns out the pip install -U setuptools was the trick. – Cush

But Fire said that pip install --upgrade setuptool didn't work(?). Whereas this did: python -m pip install --upgrade setuptool. Was it different for you? What is the explanation? – Oakland

Answer 2

Binary install it the simple way!

Use the binary-only option for pip. For example, for mysqlclient:

pip install --only-binary :all: mysqlclient

Many packages don't create a build for every single release which forces your pip to build from source. If you're happy to use the latest pre-compiled binary version, use --only-binary :all: to allow pip to use an older binary version.

Occupancy

It worked for me to install the packages which I was not able to install previously.(pystan). However another package fbprophet needed.dll file of the previous package.. However a neat trick! – Darwindarwinian

It's giving me the same error. Do we still have to install VS 2015 or above before writing the above command? – Overabundance

@ZeeshanAhmadKhalil what package are you trying to install? I can only assume that there's not a binary version available for your package + Python version + computer architecture. – Occupancy

@AlastairMcCormack yes, unfortunately, no binary version is available for eth-tester. – Overabundance

Hi @rishijain could you point how you got pystan to work for fbprophet the binary way? – Cirilo

@MauricioMaroto please ask a new question. Feel free to link to it here. – Occupancy

hello @MauricioMaroto, apologies couldn't reply earlier.- pip install --only-binary :all: pystan – Darwindarwinian

Love this, can you expand on this answer and why it works? – Irick

Sweet, this helped me avoid having to install build tools just to install ipykernel because of a missing psutil package. – Interpleader

useful for me . – Attenuant

Answer 3

To solve any of the following errors:

• Failed building wheel for misaka
• Failed to build misaka
• Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required
• Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

The solution is:

1. Go to Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017

2. Select free download under Visual Studio Community 2017. This will download the installer. Run the installer.

3. Select what you need under workload tab:

   a. Under Windows, there are three choices. Only check Desktop development with C++.

   b. Under Web & Cloud, there are seven choices. Only check Python development (I believe this is optional, but I have done it).

4. In cmd, type pip3 install misaka.

   Note if you already installed Visual Studio then when you run the installer, you can modify yours (click modify button under Visual Studio Community 2017) and do steps 3 and 4.

   Final note: If you don't want to install all modules, having the three below (or a newer version of the VC++ 2017) would be sufficient. (You can also install the Visual Studio Build Tools with only these options, so you don’t need to install Visual Studio Community Edition itself) => This minimal install is already a 4.5 GB, so saving off anything is helpful

Molding

I am not getting the option for Python development under Web & Cloud. Would it work if I left it blank? – Volumeter

most important thing is to check Desktop development with C++ ...it will work – Molding

This worked and I didn't need the Build Tools for VS2015 either. – Bullbat

added an edit to show the minimum required packages for most installations – Navicert

I am still getting an error when attempting to install on windows: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'io.h': No such file or directory – Oilcloth

For "Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required" error I clicked on the 2017 installation's modify button, chose only "SDK 10.." and "VC++ 2015.3 v14.00 (v140) toolset for desktop" (lower at the bottom). You might have to copy a couple of files as in: #14373206 if you see a LINK error. – Deprecatory

Why would you need misaka? – Hardboard

@Bram Vanroy Hi thanks for asking ..it is simply for something called link embedding.... same technique used here to mark a text as code or link or bold.... so for example lets say I have a Post model and inside this I have a record called comment, when I use misaka if I enter _ italic word _ inside this field then italic word will be displayed (without underscore) .same if I use ** bold ** then bold will be displayed .same with ` any code ` then anycode will be displayed . hope this helps – Molding

Can we install without downloading whole Visual Studio? – Participate

@Prathamesh More ,you can try other solutions as using the binary-only option for pip. Other solutions will work to solve some errors.you will still have errors here and there if you don't install the package. its totally up to you.thanks – Molding

This is the only thing that worked for me! Installing Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 did not help and setup tools were up to date, but I still got the error "Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required" until I installed Visual Studio. – Bespectacled

How much bandwidth it needs? It states that Total Space required is 4.5GB – Semele

@SmartManoj this will depend on your internet speed. – Molding

Total amount of data ? – Semele

Answer 4

As the other responses point out, one solution is to install Visual Studio 2015. However, it takes a few GBs of disk space.

One way around is to install precompiled binaries. The webpage Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages (mirror) contains precompiled binaries for many Python packages. After downloading the package of interest to you, you can install it using pip install, e.g. pip install mysqlclient‑1.3.10‑cp35‑cp35m‑win_amd64.whl.

Sandstone

Thanks. I believe pip wheel creates a wheel archive; and, pip install actually installs the specified wheel file. See pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_wheel. Btw, this approach worked for me in installing hmmlearn package via hmmlearn-0.2.1-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl wheel. – Arkhangelsk

On one of my computers, downloaded a wheel let me get around installing MS Visual C++ 14. But like Oleg said, use pip install, not pip wheel. – Clasp

@OlegMelnikov @ BennyJobigan Thanks for the correction, I amended the answer accordingly. – Sandstone

thank you for this BTW. this solved my problem with Twisted. I really didn't wanna download 3 GB of data just to use one thing! aha. – Flaw

Could someone please explain why/how this works? It worked for me, I'm just curious what exactly the compiled binary is for – Crossbar

This is best solution here. Rather than going for monolithic visual studio, i opted this. If u need any package u can also search it on 'pypi.org'. Just remember to append wheel with name. e.g 'python-Levenshtein wheels' – Inky

Use pipwin module – Semele

@FranckDernoncourt I want to install the eth-tester python package. But I can't figure out that which precompiled binary I should download!. I think precompiled binary of that package is not available there – Overabundance

Well, good as a quick solution but if you later want to install something which doesn't have a precompiled binary, you will anyway have to go through all of this again. It's usually a better idea to hit at the root of the cause than just delaying it. +1 otherwise. – Lease

save my life while i wanna install python-geohash which vc++ 14.0 is required – Murphy

It seems there isn't a compatible binary for python 3.10 yet – Gauvin

Answer 5

I had the exact issue while trying to install the Scrapy web scraping Python framework on my Windows 10 machine. I figured out the solution this way:

1. Download the latest (the last one) wheel file from this link: wheel file for twisted package

2. I'd recommend saving that wheel file in the directory where you've installed Python, i.e., somewhere on the local disk C:

3. Then visit the folder where the wheel file exists and run pip install <*wheel file's name*>

4. Finally, run the command pip install Scrapy again and you're good to use Scrapy or any other tool which required you to download a massive Windows C++ Package/SDK.

Disclaimer: This solution worked for me while trying to install Scrapy, but I can't guarantee the same happening while installing other software, packages, etc.

Buyse

Worked like a charm for me too -- and there's a good chance that your solution will work for any package "requiring" Windows C++ as long as you can find the properly compiled whl for it... If anyone finds this hypothesis incorrect -- please let us know. – Claude

Do not use the latest twisted, use that one which match your python version i.e. for python3.6 use twisted with cp36 – Episcopal

Adding to this, if you are using a virtualenv, download the above file into the Lib\site-packages folder and install using pip while virtualenv is active. – Gobbler

This is how it goes... May I add "cp..." indicates your Python version and "win..." your system 32 vs. 64 bit. So you can check in the cdm window what your Python version is python --version and pic the right whl-file – Aila

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/21928251 NOTE for windows users: after step 3, close the existing CMD or any terminal you are using and again open/start a new/fresh terminal to execute the command pip install Scrapy otherwise you may get the same error which you are getting previously while executing pip install Scrapy. – Boff

Use pipwin module – Semele

thanks. I have tried many solutions, and only this works. – Artis

This was the answer for me. I tried all the other fixes, but this was the issue. Thanks! – Bicorn

Answer 6

After reading a lot of answers on Stack Overflow and none of them working, I finally managed to solve it following the steps in this question. I will leave the steps here in case the page disappears:

Please try to install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017, select the workload “Visual C++ build tools” and check the options "C++/CLI support" and "VC++ 2015.3 v14.00 (v140) toolset for desktop" as below.

Chesterfield

Thank you! I got the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 here – Dymphia

Thanks for the link to the 2017 build tool! It finally worked for me after installing that and uninstalling the previous one. – Sprit

Answer 7

I had this exact issue while trying to install mayavi.

I also had the common error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required when pip installing a library.

After looking across many web pages and the solutions to this question, with none of them working, I figured out these steps (most taken from previous solutions) allowed this to work.

1. Go to Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 and install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017. Which is under All downloads (scroll down) → Tools for Visual Studio 2017

   • If you have already installed this, skip to 2.

2. Select the C++ components you require (I didn't know which I required, so I installed many of them).

   • If you have already installed Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 then open the application Visual Studio Installer then go to Visual Studio Build Tools 2017 → Modify → Individual Components and selected the required components.
   • From other answers, important components appear to be: C++/CLI support, VC++ 2017 version <...> latest, Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable Update, Visual C++ tools for CMake, Windows 10 SDK <...> for Desktop C++, Visual C++ Build Tools core features, Visual Studio C++ core features.

3. Install/Modify these components for Visual Studio Build Tools 2017.

4. This is the important step. Open the application Visual Studio Installer then go to Visual Studio Build Tools → Launch. Which will open a CMD window at the correct location for Microsoft Visual Studio\YYYY\BuildTools.

5. Now enter python -m pip install --upgrade setuptools within this CMD window.

6. Finally, in this same CMD window, pip install your Python library: pip install -U <library>.

Wilmawilmar

If you get errors about unresolved symbols, make sure you opened the right command prompt for your environment. If you need the 64 bit developer tools you might have to open the command prompt from the windows start menu. – Cryptoclastic

Answer 8

Use this link to download and install Visual C++ 2015 Build Tools. It will automatically download visualcppbuildtools_full.exe and install Visual C++ 14.0 without actually installing Visual Studio.

After the installation completes, retry pip install and you won't get the error again.

I have tested it on the following platforms and versions:

Python 3.6 on Windows 7 64-bit
Python 3.8 on Windows 10 64-bit

Civilize

Thanks for the link, was not able to get on Microsoft Website. – Canady

Answer 9

Use this and save time

pip install pipwin 
pipwin install yourLibrary

pipwin is like pip, but it installs precompiled Windows binaries provided by Christoph Gohlke. Saves you a lot of time googling and downloading.

And in this case pipwin will solve the problem

Error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat)

Read more about pipwin and here they mention Microsoft Visual C++

Herrod

Hi, and welcome to Stack Overflow! Your answer seems a bit incomplete — what does pipwin do and why is it better than pip? – Moniquemonism

Answer 10

I had this same problem. A solution for updating setuptools

pip install -U setuptools

or

pip install setuptools --upgrade

Karenkarena

This solution worked for me, I am using poetry virtual env for my projects and adding 'setuptools' to the poetry dependencies list (pyproject.toml file) solved the issue. – Him

Answer 11

I had the same problem when installing the spaCy module. And I checked the control panel, and I had several Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables installed already.

I selected "Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015" which was already installed on my PC → "Modify" → check "Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015". Then it will take some time and download more than 1 GB to install it.

This fixed my issue. Now I have spaCy installed.

Vesuvius

Answer 12

Make sure that you've installed these required packages. It worked perfectly in my case as I installed the checked packages:

Demodena

Thank you very much for this answer. was missing C++/CLI support and VC++ 2015.3...; adding those fixed all my issues – Ovaritis

Answer 13

To expand on the answers by ocean800, davidsheldon and user3661384:

You should now no longer use Visual Studio Tools 2015 since a newer version is available. As indicated by the Python documentation, you should be using Visual Studio Tools 2017 instead.

Visual C++ Build Tools 2015 was upgraded by Microsoft to Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017.

Download it from here.

You will also require setuptools. If you don't have setup tools, run:

pip install setuptools

Or if you already have it, be sure to upgrade it.

pip install setuptools --upgrade

For the Python documentation link above you will see that setuptools version must be at least 34.4.0 for Visual Studio Tools to work.

Karnak

It's rather sad that Python needs to use another language platform's compiler to do its grunt work. Why did the python team not build their own compiler with just the bare bones of what is needed. – Hydrocortisone

@AndrewS Yes it's sad but nessesary. Developing an efficient C compiler is no easy feat (like developing a new language). Especially cross platform (Windows insits on it's own non-standard system), so it is really impossible to expect that. C++ is even worse because it is much more complex (even during the develpment of the MS compiler for C++ there were massive problems getting support for all the syntax; hence the stdafx.h header to include the nessesary features). Doing this would mean using HUGE amounts of development time to reinvent the wheel. – Karnak

@AndrewS as well as almost double the development time to even maintain both projects ultimately slowing down each release of Python itself. Building off the already existing MS compiler is much easier (as they do not need to develop it). – Karnak

Answer 14

Use the link to Visual C++ 2015 Build Tools. That will install Visual C++ 14.0 without installing Visual Studio.

Underarm

This is what solved it for me, since C++ 2015 built tools = VC 14.0 (2017 = VC 14.1, 2019 = VC 14.2) – Helsie

Answer 15

I had the same issue. Downloading the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 worked for me.

Prescriptive

Isn't that download load link (effectively) broken? Is it actually still available? – Oakland

Answer 16

I had exactly the same issue and solved it by installing mysql-connector-python with:

pip install mysql-connector-python

I am on Python 3.7 and Windows 10 and installing Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 (as described here) did not solve my problem that was identical to yours.

Amphiarthrosis

Answer 17

Just go to https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ find your suitable package (whl file). Download it. Go to the download folder in cmd or typing 'cmd' on the address bar of the folder. Run the command :

pip install mysqlclient-1.4.6-cp38-cp38-win32.whl

(Type the file name correctly. I have given an example only). Your problem will be solved without installing build toll cpp of 6GB size.

Chambertin

I was having a problem with the setproctitle package, tried associated wheel file. It says, "wheelname" is not a supported wheel in this platform. – Language

Answer 18

To add on top of Sushant Chaudhary's answer:

In my case, I got another error regarding lxml as below:

copying src\lxml\isoschematron\resources\xsl\iso-schematron-xslt1\readme.txt -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.7\lxml\isoschematron\resources\xsl\iso-schematron-xslt1
running build_ext
building 'lxml.etree' extension
error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Get it with "Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools": http://landinghub.visualstudio.com/visual-cpp-build-tools

I had to install lxml‑4.2.3‑cp37‑cp37m‑win_amd64.whl the same way as in the answer of Sushant Chaudhary to successfully complete installation of Scrapy.

1. Download lxml‑4.2.3‑cp37‑cp37m‑win_amd64.whl from Lxml
2. put it in folder where Python is installed
3. install it using pip install <file-name>

Now you can run pip install scrapy.

Solder

Answer 19

I just had the same issue while using the latest Python 3.6. With Windows OS 10 Home Edition and a 64-bit operating system.

Steps to solve this issue:

1. Uninstall any versions of Visual Studio you have had, through Control Panel
2. Install Visual Studio 2015 and chose the default option that will install Visual C++ 14.0 on its own
3. You can use PyCharm for installing Scrapy: Menu Project → Project Interpreter → + (install Scrapy)
4. Check Scrapy in the REPL and PyCharm by import. You should not see any errors.

Selfcontent

Also Not required to use Conda/pip for this , just the above solved my issues . – Selfcontent

If you already have visual studio 2015 (any version including community) installed you don't need to uninstall it, just go to programs & features and modify the installation, tick on the programming languages - Visual C++ as per this https://mcmap.net/q/94275/-error-while-installing-lxml-through-pip-microsoft-visual-c-14-0-is-required – Aviator

Answer 20

I had a similar situation installing pymssql.

pip was trying to build the package, because there were no official wheels for Python 3.6 and Windows.

I solved it by downloading an unofficial wheel from Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages.

Specifically for your case: MySQL-python

Kilovoltampere

Answer 21

None of the solutions here and elsewhere worked for me. It turns out an incompatible 32-bit version of mysqlclient is being installed on my 64-bit Windows 10 OS because I'm using a 32-bit version of Python.

I had to uninstall my current Python 3.7 32 bit, and reinstalled Python 3.7 64 bit and everything is working fine now.

Gervais

This works for me and helps me from drinking cheap poison :) – Stalky

Answer 22

I had the same exact issue on my windows 10 python version 3.8. In my case, I needed to install mysqlclient were the error occurred Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Because installing visual studio and it's packages could be a tedious process, Here's what I did:

step 1 - Go to unofficial python binaries from any browser and open its website.

step 2 - press ctrl+F and type whatever you want. In my case it was mysqlclient.

step 3 - Go into it and choose according to your python version and windows system. In my case it was mysqlclient‑1.4.6‑cp38‑cp38‑win32.whl and download it.

step 4 - open command prompt and specify the path where you downloaded your file. In my case it was C:\Users\user\Downloads

step 5 - type pip install .\mysqlclient‑1.4.6‑cp38‑cp38‑win32.whl and press enter.

Thus it was installed successfully, after which I went my project terminal re-entered the required command. This solved my problem

Note that, while working on the project in pycharm, I also tried installing mysql-client from the project interpreter. But mysql-client and mysqlclient are different things. I have no idea why and it did not work.

Bernadinebernadotte

Answer 23

I was facing the same problem. The following worked for me:

Download the unofficial binaries file from Christoph Gohlke installers site as per the Python version installed on your system.

Navigate to the folder where you have installed the file and run

pip install filename

For me python_ldap‑3.0.0‑cp35‑cp35m‑win_amd64.whl worked as my machine is 64 bit and Python version is 3.5.

This successfully installed python-ldap on my Windows machine. You can try the same for mysql-python.

Pikeperch

How is this answer useful ? – Distiller

Answer 24

Look if the package has an official fork that include the necessary binary wheels.

I needed the package python-Levenshtein, had this error, and found the package python-Levenshtein-wheels instead.

Melbourne

Answer 25

This works for me:
pip install --only-binary :all: mysqlclient

Vassaux

Answer 26

If Visual Studio is NOT your thing, and instead you are using VS Code, then this link will guide you thru the installer to get C++ running on your Windows.

You only needs to complete the Pre-Requisites part. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc/#_prerequisites

This is similar with other answers, but this link will probably age better than some of the responses here.

PS: don't forget to run pip install --upgrade setuptools

Britishism

I have asked a new question whether Visual C++ (4.5 GB) can be imitated by MinGW which costs just 450 MB, see #62149829 – Novena

Wow! Save 4GB in the install process would be an amazing accomplishment. I hope you can get it sorted @Lorenz. I will definitely keep an eye on your question. – Britishism

Answer 27

I tried ALL of the above and none worked. Just before before signing up for the booby hatch, I found another reason for the error : using the wrong shell on Windows.

conda init cmd.exe

did the trick for me. Hope it may save someone else, too.

Elocution

Answer 28

I had the same problem. I needed a 64-bit version of Python so I installed 3.5.0 (the most recent as of writing this). After switching to 3.4.3 all of my module installations worked.

Python Releases for Windows

Thresher

Any other solution? other than rolling back to 3.4.3 – Chenault

Did you try out the process I've described on my solution above. It should work for you since I think that your issue is quite similar to mine. Give it a try. – Buyse

Answer 29

Oops! Looks like they don't have Windows wheels on PyPI.

In the meantime, installing from source probably works or try downloading MSVC++ 14 as suggested in the error message and by others on this page.

Christoph's site also has unofficial Windows binaries for Python extension packages (.whl files).

Follow the steps mentioned in the following links to install binaries:

1. Directly in base Python
2. In virtual environments and PyCharm

Also check:

filename.whl is not supported wheel on this platform

Selfrising

Answer 30

For Python 3.7.4, the following set of commands worked: Before those commands, you need to confirm that Desktop with C++ and Python is installed in Visual Studio.

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build"
vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64
cd \
set CL=-FI"%VCINSTALLDIR%\tools\msvc\14.16.27023\include\stdint.h"
    
pip install pycrypto

Dhyana

What is "Desktop with C++ and Python"? Can you provide a link and/or a screenshot for some context? Or the equivalent? Please respond by editing (changing) your answer, not here in comments (without "Edit:", "Update:", or similar - the answer should appear as if it was written today). – Oakland

Answer 31

I had the same issue while installing mysqlclient for the Django project.

In my case, it's the system architecture mismatch causing the issue. I have Windows 7 64bit version on my system. But, I had installed Python 3.7.2 32 bit version by mistake.

So, I re-installed Python interpreter (64bit) and ran the command

pip install mysqlclient

I hope this would work with other Python packages as well.

Amalgamate

Answer 32

TLDR run vcvars64.bat

After endlessly searching through similar questions with none of the solutions working. -Adding endless folders to my path and removing them. uninstalling and reinstalling visual studio commmunity and build tools. and step by step attempting to debug I finally found a solution that worked for me.

(background notes if anyone is in a similar situation) I recently reset my main computer and after reinstalling the newest version of python (Python3.9) libraries I used to install with no troubles (main example pip install opencv-python) gave

cl
    is not a full path and was not found in the PATH.

after adding cl to the path from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.27.29110\bin\Hostx64\x64

and several different windows kits one at a time getting the following.

The C compiler

"C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2019/Community/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.27.29110/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe"

is not able to compile a simple test program.

with various link errors or " Run Build Command(s):jom /nologo cmTC_7c75e\fast && The system cannot find the file specified"

upgrading setuptools and wheel from both a regular command line and an admin one did nothing as well as trying to manually download a wheel or trying to install with --only-binary :all:

Finally the end result that worked for me was running the correct vcvars.bat for my python installation namely running "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat" once (not vcvarsall or vcvars32) (because my python installed was 64 bit) and then running the regular command pip install opencv-python worked.

Brevier

Answer 33

If you have already installed Visual Studio Build Tools (as in other comments), and upgraded setuptools but it still doesn't work:

Make sure to run pip under x86 or x64 Native Tools Command Prompt.

It can be found under VS folder in Windows start menu. The default command line prompt may NOT provide Pip the path to the VS build tool, as is in my case.

Bryozoan

Answer 34

Following the official installation guide for Windows C++ compilers:

https://wiki.python.org/moin/WindowsCompilers

to upgrade setuptools and install specific Microsoft Visual C++ compiler.

It has already contains some points refered in other answer.

Murphy

Answer 35

1. First you'll need to download the visual studio build tools from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads#other
2. Rename the file vs_buildtools.exe (not required but you'll have to modify the script below)

start-process -wait -filepath vs_buildtools.exe -ArgumentList '--quiet --wait --norestart --nocache --installPath C:\BuildTools `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.VC.Tools.142.x86.x64 `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.19041 `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CMake.Project `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.14.29.16.11.CLI.Support `
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.UWP.VC.v142'

I created a seperate question and answer here for windows docker users Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is Required, installing pip package on Windows Docker

Beginning

Answer 36

I already had a version of VC++ that was v14+, but was encountering the issues due to Anaconda. Ultimately, the following worked for me instead of using pip, pipwin, or a wheel file.

conda install <package_name_here>

Bellbottoms