error Unable to find vcvarsall bat

Question

I tried to install the Python package dulwich     pip install dulwich   But I get a cryptic error message   error  Unable to find vcvarsall bat   The same happens if I try installing the package manually    gt  python setup py install running build ext building  dulwich  objects  extension error  Unable to find vcvarsall bat

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If you want to compile with Visual Studio C++ instead of mingw...

Run python.exe to display which version of VC++ it was compiled with (example shown below).

It is important to use the corresponding version of the Visual C++ compiler that Python was compiled with since distilutils's get_build_version prevents mixing versions (per Piotr's warning).
- Yellow (top) is Python 2.7, compiled with MSC v.1500 (Visual Studio C++ 2008)
- Red (bottom) is Python 3.4.1, compiled with MSC v.1600 (Visual Studio C++ 2010)

Use the table below^[1] to match the internal VC++ version with the corresponding Visual Studio release:

MSC v.1000 -> Visual C++ 4.x        
MSC v.1100 -> Visual C++ 5          
MSC v.1200 -> Visual C++ 6          
MSC v.1300 -> Visual C++ .NET       
MSC v.1310 -> Visual C++ .NET 2003  
MSC v.1400 -> Visual C++ 2005  (8.0)
MSC v.1500 -> Visual C++ 2008  (9.0)
MSC v.1600 -> Visual C++ 2010 (10.0)
MSC v.1700 -> Visual C++ 2012 (11.0)
MSC v.1800 -> Visual C++ 2013 (12.0)
MSC v.1900 -> Visual C++ 2015 (14.0)
MSC v.1910 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.0)
MSC v.1911 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.3)
MSC v.1912 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.5)
MSC v.1913 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.6)
MSC v.1914 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.7)
MSC v.1915 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.8)
MSC v.1916 -> Visual C++ 2017 (15.9)

Download and install the corresponding version of Visual Studio C++ from the previous step.
Additional notes for specific versions of VC++ are listed below.

Notes for Visual Studio C++ 2008

For only the 32-bit compilers, download Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express Edition.

For the 64-bit compilers^[2]^[3], download Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.
- Uncheck everything except Developer Tools >> Visual C++ Compilers to save time and disk space from installing SDK tools you otherwise don't need.
Notes for Visual Studio C++ 2010

According to Microsoft, if you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, it may have removed the compilers and libraries for VC++.
If that is the case, download Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Compiler Update.

Notes for Visual Studio C++ 2015

If you don't need the Visual Studio IDE, download Visual Studio C++ 2015 Build Tools.

Notes for Visual Studio C++ 2017

If you don't need the Visual Studio IDE, download Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017.

Suggestion: If you have both a 32- and 64-bit Python installation, you may also want to use virtualenv to create separate Python environments so you can use one or the other at a time without messing with your path to choose which Python version to use.

According to @srodriguex, you may be able to skip manually loading the batch file (Steps 4-6) by instead copying a few batch files to where Python is searching by following this answer. If that doesn't work, here are the following steps that originally worked for me.

Open up a cmd.exe
Before you try installing something which requires C extensions, run the following batch file to load the VC++ compiler's environment into the session (i.e. environment variables, the path to the compiler, etc).

Execute:
- 32-bit Compilers:
  
  Note: 32-bit Windows installs will only have C:\Program Files\ as expected
  
  "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
- 64-bit Compilers:
  
  "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars64.bat"
  
  Note: Yes, the native 64-bit compilers are in Program Files (x86). Don't ask me why.
  Additionally, if you are wondering what the difference between vcvars64.bat and vcvarsx86_amd64.bat or more importantly the difference between amd64 and x86_amd64, the former are for the native 64-bit compiler tools and the latter are the 64-bit cross compilers that can run on a 32-bit Windows installation.
Update:
If for some reason you are getting error: ... was unexpected at this time. where the ... is some series of characters, then you need to check that you path variable does not have any extraneous characters like extra quotations or stray characters. The batch file is not going to be able to update your session path if it can't make sense of it in the first place.
If that went well, you should get one of the following messages depending on which version of VC++ and which command you ran:

For the 32-bit compiler tools:
Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 20xx x86 tools.

For the 64-bit compiler tools:
Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 20xx x64 tools.
Now, run the setup via python setup.py install or pip install pkg-name
Hope and cross your fingers that the planets are aligned correctly for VC++ to cooperate.

User · Answer

I tried all the above answers  and found all of them not to work  this was perhaps I was using Windows 8 and had installed Visual Studio 2012  In this case  this is what you do   The vcvarsall bat file is located here  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC  Simply select the file  and copy it   Then go to this directory  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 Common7 Tools  and paste the file  And then  all should be well

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Maybe somebody can be interested  the following worked for me for the py2exe package   I have windows 7 64 bit and portable python 2 7  Visual Studio 2005 Express with Windows SDK for Windows 7 and  NET Framework 4   set VS90COMNTOOLS  VS80COMNTOOLS    then   python exe setup py install

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I had this problem using Python 3 4 1 on Windows 7 x64  and unfortunately the packages I needed didn t have suitable exe or wheels that I could use  This system requires a few  workarounds   which are detailed below  and TLDR at bottom    Using the info in Jaxrtech s answer above  I determined I needed Visual Studio C   2010  sys version return MSC v 1600   so I installed Visual C   2010 Express from the link in his answer  which is http   go microsoft com  linkid 9709949  I installed everything with updates  but as you can read below  this was a mistake  Only the original version of Express should be installed at this time  no updated anything    vcvarsall bat was now present  but there was a new error when installing the package  query vcvarsall    raise ValueError str list result keys     ValueError   u path    There are other stackoverflow questions with this error  such as Errors while building installing C module for Python 2 7  I determined from that answer that 2010 Express only installs 32-bit compilers  To get 64-bit  and other  compilers  you need to install Windows 7 1 SDK  See http   msdn microsoft com en-us windowsserver bb980924 aspx  This would not install for me though  and the installer returned the error installation failed with return code 5100  I found the solution at the following link  http   support microsoft com kb 2717426  In short  if newer versions of x86 and x64 Microsoft Visual C   2010 Redistributable s are installed  they conflict with the ones in SDK installer  and need uninstalling first   The SDK then installed  but I noticed vcvars64 bat still did not exist in C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin  nor its subfolders  vcvarsall bat runs the vcvars64 batch file  so without it  the python package still wouldn t install  I forgot the error that was shown at this time    I then found some instructions here  http   www cryptohaze com wiki index php Windows 7 Build Setup Download VS 2010 and Windows SDK 7 1 Following the instructions  I had already installed Express and 7 1 SDK  so installed SDK 7 1 SP1  and did the missing header file fix  I then manually created vcvars64 bat with the content CALL setenv  x64  I will paste all those instructions here  so they don t get lost      Step 1 is to download Visual Studio Express 2010       http   www microsoft com visualstudio en-us products 2010-editions express   is a good place to start  Download the installer  and run it    vc web exe   You don t need the SQL 2008 additional download       You ll also need the Windows SDK  currently 7 1  for the 64-bit   compilers - unless you want to do 32-bit only builds  which are not   fully supported         http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 8279 is a good   starting point to download this - you ll want to run winsdk web exe   when downloaded       The default install here is just fine       Finally  download and install the Windows SDK 7 1 SP1 update    http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 4422      And  to fix missing header file  VS2010 SP1    http   www microsoft com downloads en confirmation aspx FamilyID 75568aa6-8107-475d-948a-ef22627e57a5      And  bloody hell  fix the missing batch file for VS2010 Express  This   is getting downright absurd       In C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin amd64    create  vcvars64 bat  with the following  you will need to be running   as administrator        CALL setenv  x64   My python package still did not install  can t recall error   I then found some instructions  copied below  to use the special SDK 7 1 Command Prompt  see  https   mail python org pipermail distutils-sig 2012-February 018300 html     Never mind this question   Somebody here noticed this item on the menu   Start- All Programs- Microsoft Windows SDK v7 1 - Windows SDK 7 1 Command Prompt      This runs a batch job that appears to set up a working environment for the compiler   From that prompt  you can type  setup py build  or  setup py install     I opened the Windows SDK 7 1 Command Prompt as instructed  and used it to run easy install on the python package  And at last  success     TLDR    Install Visual Studio Express 2010  preferably without updated redistributables or SQL server   Install Windows 7 1 SDK Instal SDK 7 1 SP1 update  and VS2010 SP1 header file fix  this step may not be required   Manually create C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin amd64 vcvars64 bat with content CALL setenv  x64 Start- All Programs- Microsoft Windows SDK v7 1 - Windows SDK 7 1 Command Prompt to open special x64 command prompt  which can then be used with python easy install pip etc  including those in virtual envs

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I just had this same problem  so I ll tell my story here hoping it helps someone else with the same issues and save them the couple of hours I just spent   I have mingw  g    GCC  4 6 1  and python 2 7 3 in a windows 7 box and I m trying to install PyCrypto   It all started with this error when running setup py install    error  Unable to find vcvarsall bat   Easily solved after googling the error by specifying mingw as the compiler of choice    setup py install build --compiler mingw32   The problem is that then I got a different error    configure  error  cannot run C compiled programs    It turns out that my anti-virus was blocking the execution of a freshly compiled  exe  I just disabled the anti-virus  resident shield  and went to the next error   cc1 exe  error  unrecognized command line option  -mno-cygwin   error  command  gcc  failed with exit status 1   This solved it   Either install a slightly older version of MinGW  or edit distutils cygwinccompiler py in your Python directory to remove all instances of -mno-cygwin    from here   Now  I can finally start working

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Update  Comments point out that the instructions here may be dangerous  Consider using the Visual C   2008 Express edition or the purpose-built Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python  details  and NOT using the original answer below  Original error message means the required version of Visual C   is not installed     For Windows installations   While running setup py for package installations  Python 2 7 searches for an installed Visual Studio 2008  You can trick Python to use a newer Visual Studio by setting the correct path in VS90COMNTOOLS environment variable before calling setup py   Execute the following command based on the version of Visual Studio installed    Visual Studio 2010  VS10   SET VS90COMNTOOLS  VS100COMNTOOLS  Visual Studio 2012  VS11   SET VS90COMNTOOLS  VS110COMNTOOLS  Visual Studio 2013  VS12   SET VS90COMNTOOLS  VS120COMNTOOLS  Visual Studio 2015  VS14   SET VS90COMNTOOLS  VS140COMNTOOLS      WARNING  As noted below  this answer is unlikely to work if you are trying to compile python modules   See Building lxml for Python 2 7 on Windows for details

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Look in the setup py file of the package you are trying to install  If it is an older package it may be importing distutils core setup   rather than setuptools setup     I ran in to this  in 2015  with a combination of these factors    The Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7 from http   aka ms vcpython27 An older package that uses distutils core setup   Trying to do python setup py build rather than using pip    If you use a recent version of pip  it will force  monkeypatch  the package to use setuptools  even if its setup py calls for distutils  However  if you are not using pip  and instead are just doing python setup py build  the build process will use distutils core setup    which does not know about the compiler install location     Solution  Step 1  Open the appropriate Visual C   2008 Command Prompt  Open the Start menu or Start screen  and search for  Visual C   2008 32-bit Command Prompt   if your python is 32-bit  or  Visual C   2008 64-bit Command Prompt   if your python is 64-bit   Run it  The command prompt should say Visual C   2008     in the title bar   Step 2  Set environment variables  Set these environment variables in the command prompt you just opened   SET DISTUTILS USE SDK 1 SET MSSdk 1   Reference http   bugs python org issue23246  Step 3  Build and install  cd to the package you want to build  and run python setup py build  then python setup py install  If you want to install in to a virtualenv  activate it before you build

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I find a much easier way to do this  Just download binaries packages from website http   www lfd uci edu  gohlke pythonlibs  For example  autopy3-0 51 1-cp36-cp36m-win32 whl cp36 means Python 3 6  Download it And install by pip install location of file

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You can use easy install instead of pip it works for me

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With Python 3 4  the dependency is on Visual Studio 2010  Installing Visual C   2010 Express fixed the problem for me    Tricking it into using the VS 2008 or 2013 installs that I happened to have didn t work

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Install Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition from https   www visualstudio com  then  for Python 3 4  set VS100COMNTOOLS  VS140COMNTOOLS   amp  amp  pip install XX

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I didn t see any answer using vswhere which I think is the correct way to do it since Visual Studio 15 2   Here s how I run vsvars64 bat  I guess it s similar for vsvarsall   def init vsvars        cprint         cprint header  Initializing vs vars       vswhere path   r  ProgramFiles x86   Microsoft Visual Studio Installer vswhere exe      vswhere path   path expandvars vswhere path      if not path exists vswhere path           raise EnvironmentError  vswhere exe not found at   s   vswhere path       vs path   common run process      vswhere path                                     -latest    -property    installationPath        vs path   vs path rstrip        vsvars path   os path join vs path   VC Auxiliary Build vcvars64 bat         common run process      vsvars path          os system    s     vsvars path    run process does a bunch of things but basically boils down to this       output          process   subprocess Popen          commandline          stdout subprocess PIPE          stderr subprocess STDOUT          universal newlines True      for stdout line in iter process stdout readline               cprint stdout line          output    stdout line     process stdout close        return code   process wait       return output

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The easiest way to solve this in 2016 is to install Chocolatey and then the  vcpython27 package  Open Powershell    gt  iex   new-object net webclient  DownloadString  https   chocolatey org install ps1     gt  choco install python2 -y  gt  choco install vcpython27 -y

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The answer given by  monkey is one of the correct ones  but it is incomplete   In case you d like to use MinGW  you should select the C  C   and also other development tools suggested during the MinGW installation process to also get  make exe    You must also have the path set to make exe in the env   To complete his answer  here are the steps    Add mingw32 s bin directory to your environment variables Append C  Programs MinGW bin C  Programs MinGW msys 1 0 bin  to the PATH  Edit  create if it doesn t exist  the distutils cfg file located at C  Python26 Lib distutils distutils cfg to be    build  compiler mingw32    Make sure the environment variables is set by opening a new cmd exe

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Is Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7 at http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 44266 not a solution

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calling import setuptools will monkey patch distutils to force compatibility with Visual Studio  Calling vcvars32 bat manually will setup the virtual environment and prevent other common errors the compiler will throw  For VS 2017 the file is located at      C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual   Studio 2017 Community VC Auxiliary Build vcvars32 bat    Here is the setup script I use to quickly compile  pyx files to  pyd   Note  it uses the 3rd party module  send2trash    cython setup py import sys  os  time  platform  subprocess from setuptools import setup  find packages from Cython Build import cythonize from traceback import format exc    USAGE        from cython setup import run     run pyx path     vcvars   r C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Community VC Auxiliary Build vcvars32 bat     NOTE  to use visual studio 2017 you must have setuptools version 34  vcvars   r C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 BuildTools VC Auxiliary Build vcvars32 bat    def  build ext        try          pyx path   sys argv pop -1          pyx path   os path abspath pyx path          if not os path exists pyx path               raise FileNotFoundError f  pyx path  does not exist           project name   sys argv pop -1          os chdir os path abspath os path dirname pyx path             print  cwd   s    os getcwd            print os path abspath  build            setup              name project name                cmdclass     build ext   build ext               packages find packages                  ext modules cythonize extensions              ext modules cythonize pyx path                                    compiler directives   language level   3   infer types   True   binding   False                                     annotate True                 include dirs    numpy get include                build dir os path abspath  build                 except          input format exc      def retry func       def wrapper  args    kw           tries   0         while True              try                  return func  args    kw              except Exception                  tries    1                 if tries  gt  4                      raise                 time sleep 0 4       return wrapper    retry def cleanup pyx path       from send2trash import send2trash     c file   os path splitext pyx path  0      c      if os path exists c file           os remove c file       if os path exists  build            send2trash  build     def move pyd files pyx path       pyx dir   os path dirname pyx path      build dir   os path join pyx dir   build       if not os path exists build dir           raise RuntimeError f build dir  build dir  did not exist           found pyd   False     for top  dirs  nondirs in os walk build dir           for name in nondirs              if name lower   endswith   pyd   or name lower   endswith   so                    found pyd   True                 old path   os path join top  name                  new path   os path join pyx dir  name                  if os path exists new path                       print f removing  new path                        os remove new path                  print f file created at  new path                    os rename old path  new path      if not found pyd          raise RuntimeError  Never found  pyd file to move    def run pyx path                param pyx path       type pyx path       return  this function creates the batch file  which in turn calls this module  which calls cythonize  once done     the batch script deletes itself    I m sure theres a less convoluted way of doing this  but it works      rtype              try          project name   os path splitext os path basename pyx path   0          run script project name  os path abspath pyx path       except          input format exc      def run script project name  pyx path       dirname   os path dirname pyx path        ------------------------------     os chdir dirname      if os path exists vcvars              raise RuntimeError            f Could not find vcvars32 bat at  vcvars  nis Visual Studio Installed  nIs setuptools version  gt  34            subprocess check call f call   vcvars     shell True       cmd    python  if platform system       Windows  else  python3      subprocess check call f  cmd      file     build ext   project name     pyx path     shell True      move pyd files pyx path      cleanup pyx path    if len sys argv   gt  2       build ext

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Go here  http   docs continuum io anaconda install html windows-install  There are instructions to install anaconda which will provide a GUI and a silent install of a majority of the packages that seem to be causing this issue from http   www scipy org    I am aware of the solution for 2 7 here https   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 44266 but I did not see an option for Python 3 4   After downloading and installing Anaconda you should be able to import a majority of the packages you need from scipy   Hope this helps some people   Took me 45 minutes of scouring posts and sites   EDIT  Just wanted to note there is a Python34 link on the GUI page next to the OS symbols

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An exhaustive list of MS V    versions and installation variations officially supported by distutils  and some by setuptools  and how to use them can be found at  https   wiki python org moin WindowsCompilers  It also specifies which VC   version is required for which official Win32 Python release  Note that MinGW is not officially supported  see below for details    In brief    For each release  there s a specific Visual Studio release that works out of the box    Note that Express editions before 2012 do not support x64  Trying to use one for x64 results in an obscure error   For standalone SDKs  it s generally required to run the installation from the SDK prompt   set environment variables     For some  this requirement can be lifted by a one-time tweaking which doesn t have adversal side effects  Some unusual VC   releases are supported by setuptools and not distutils  MinGW is said to  work   but only for x86  https   bugs python org issue4709 says that problems with its support lie in MinGW itself and even x86 is bound to have problems since Python 3 5

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I got the same problem and have solved it at the moment    Google  told me that I need to install  Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7   I install not only the tool  but also Visual C   2008 Reditributable  but it didn t help  I then tried to install Visual C   2008 Express Edition  And the problem has gone   Just try to install Visual C   2008 Express Edition

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I followed the instructions http   springflex blogspot ru 2014 02 how-to-fix-valueerror-when-trying-to html  but nothing happened  Then I installed 2010 Visual Studio Express  http   www microsoft com visualstudio en-us products 2010-editions visual-cpp-express  following the advice http   blog python org 2012 05 recent-windows-changes-in-python-33 html it helped me

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fastest solution   If you have python 3 4 x  the solution is simply to install  VC   2010 since it is used to compile itself into   https   www visualstudio com en-us downloads d-2010-express  my python version is MSC v 1600 32 bit  intel   on win32  worked fine on Windows8

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I tried many solutions but only one worked for me  the install of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express C     I got this issue with a Python 2 7 module written in C  yEnc  which has other issues with MS VS   Note that Python 2 7 is built with MS VS 2008 version  not 2010   Despite the fact it s free  it is quite hard to find since MS is promoting VS 2010  Still  the MSDN official very direct links are still working  check https   stackoverflow com a 15319069 2227298 for download links

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I am tried all the above answers  but not worked for me   I was using Windows 10 and had installed Visual Studio 2010 In my case need add vcvars64 bat to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin amd64  below is vcvars64 bat   CALL  C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 1 Bin SetEnv cmd   x64   Install Microsoft SDK 7 1 if you not install  and rerun pip install dulwich

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I encountered this issue when I tried to install numpy library on my python 3 5  The solution is to install VS2015  I had VS2008  2012  2013  none of which is compatible with python 3 5  Apparently newer version of python has dependency on newer versions of VS   Also make sure C   Common Tools are installed with Visual Studio

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You can download the free Visual C   2008 Express Edition from http   go microsoft com  linkid 7729279  which will set the VS90COMNTOOLS environment variable during installation and therefore build with a compatible compiler   As  PiotrDobrogost mentioned in a comment  his answer to this other question goes into details about why Visual C   2008 is the right thing to build with  but this can change as the Windows build of Python moves to newer versions of Visual Studio  Building lxml for Python 2 7 on Windows

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http   www stickpeople com projects python win-psycopg   Installing Appropriate file from above link fixed my issue   Mention  Jason Erickson  jerickso stickpeople com   He manages this page fairly well for Windows users

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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 following platform and versions   Python 3 6 on Windows 7 64-bit Python 3 7 on Windows Server 2016  64-bit system  Python 3 8 on Windows 10 64-bit

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Looks like its looking for VC compilers  so you could try to mention compiler type with -c mingw32  since you have msys  python setup py install -c mingw32

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Below steps fixed this issue for me  I was trying to create setup with cython extension    Install Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7  The default install location would be   C  Users PC-user AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python This might actually fix the issue  test once before proceeding   If it fails  Check where in VC   for python vcvarsall bat file is located Open the msvc9compiler py file of distutils package in notepad   In my box this was   C  Anaconda2 Lib distutils msvc9compiler py find vcvarsall function in this file  determine the version of VC by printing out version argument  For Python 2 7 it s likely to be 9 0 Now create an environment variable VS90COMNTOOLS  Pointing to C  Users PC-user AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python 9 0 VC bin For some reason distutils expects the vcvarsall bat file to be within VC dir  but VC   for python tools has it in the root of 9 0 To fix this  remove  VC  from the path join  roughly around line 247         productdir   os path join toolsdir  os pardir  os pardir   VC       productdir   os path join toolsdir  os pardir  os pardir     The above steps fixed the issue for me

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I spent almost 2 days figuring out how to fix this problem in my python 3 4 64 bit version  Python 3 4 3  v3 4 3 9b73f1c3e601  Feb 24 2015  22 44 40   MSC v 1600 64 bit  AMD64   on win32  Solution 1  hard   before reading this  read first Solution 2 below  Finally  this is what helped me    install Visual C   2010 Express install Microsoft Windows SDK v7 1 for Windows 7 create manually file vcvars64 bat in C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin amd64 which contains CALL  C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 1 Bin SetEnv cmd   x64 or other path depending on where you have yours installed  this seems to be optional  install Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 together with Microsoft Visual C   2010 Service Pack 1 Compiler Update for the Windows SDK 7 1 after that I tried to pip install numpy but received the following error   File  numpy core setup py   line 686  in get mathlib info raise RuntimeError  Broken toolchain  cannot link a simple C program   RuntimeError  Broken toolchain  cannot link a simple C program   I changed mfinfo to None in C  Python34 Lib distutils msvc9compiler py per this https   stackoverflow com a 23099820 4383472 finally after pip install numpy command my avast antivirus tried to interfere into the installation process  but i quickly disabled it   It took very long - several minutes for numpy to compile  I even thought that there was an error  but finally everything was ok   Solution 2  easy   I know this approach has already been mentioned in a highly voted answer  but let me repeat since it really is easier  After going through all of this work I understood that the best way for me is just to use already precompiled binaries from http   www lfd uci edu  gohlke pythonlibs  in future  There is very small chance that I will ever need some package  or a version of a package  which this site doesn t contain  The installation process is also much quicker this way  For example  to install numpy    donwload numpy-1 9 2 mkl-cp34-none-win amd64 whl  if you have Python 3 4 64-bit  from that site in command prompt or powershell install it with pip pip install numpy-1 9 2 mkl-cp34-none-win amd64 whl  or full path to the file depending how command prompt is opened

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I had the same error  which I find silly and not really helpful whatsoever as error messages go  and continued having problems  despite having a C compiler available    Surprising  what ended up working for me was simply upgrading pip and setuptools to the most recent version  Hope this helps someone else out there

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What s going on  Python modules can be part written in C or C    typically for speed   If you try to install such a package with Pip  or setup py   it has to compile that C C   from source  Out the box  Pip will brazenly assume you the compiler Microsoft Visual C   installed  If you don t have it  you ll see this cryptic error message  Error  Unable to find vcvarsall bat    The prescribed solution is to install a C C   compiler  either Microsoft Visual C    or MinGW  an open-source project   However  installing and configuring either is prohibitively difficult   Edit 2014  Microsoft have published a special C   compiler for Python 2 7   The easiest solution is to use Christoph Gohlke s Windows installers   msi  for popular Python packages  He builds installers for Python 2 x and 3 x  32 bit and 64 bit  You can download them from http   www lfd uci edu  gohlke pythonlibs     If you too think  Error  Unable to find vcvarsall bat  is a ludicrously cryptic and unhelpful message  then please comment on the bug at http   bugs python org issue2943 to replace it with a more helpful and user-friendly message    For comparison  Ruby ships with a package manager Gem and offers a quasi-official C C   compiler  DevKit  If you try to install a package without it  you see this helpful friendly useful message      Please update your PATH to include build tools or download the DevKit from http   rubyinstaller org downloads and follow the instructions at http   github com oneclick rubyinstaller wiki Development-Kit   You can read a longer rant about Python packaging at https   stackoverflow com a 13445719 284795

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You ll need to install a Microsoft compiler  compatible with the compiler used to build Python  This means you need Visual C   2008  or newer  with some tweaking    Microsoft now supplies a bundled compiler and headers just to be able to compile Python extensions  at the memorable URL       Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7      http   aka ms vcpython27   This is a relatively small package  85MB to download  installable without admin privileges  no reboot required  The name is a little misleading  the compiler will work for any Python version originally compiled with Visual C   2008  not just Python 2 7   If you start a Python interactive prompt or print sys version  look for the MSC version string  if it is MSC v 1500 you can use this tool   From the original announcement to the distutils list      Microsoft has released a compiler package for Python 2 7 to make it easier for people to build and distribute their C extension modules on Windows  The Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7  a k a  VC9  is available from  http   aka ms vcpython27       This package contains all the tools and headers required to build C extension modules for Python 2 7 32-bit and 64-bit  note that some extension modules require 3rd party dependencies such as OpenSSL or libxml2 that are not included   Other versions of Python built with Visual C   2008 are also supported  so  Python 2 7  is just advertising - it ll work fine with 2 6 and 3 2    Note that you need to have setuptools 6 0 or newer installed  listed in the system requirements on the download page   The project you are installing must use setuptools setup    not distutils or the auto-detection won t work   Microsoft has stated that they want to keep the URL stable  so that automated scripts can reference it easily

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I wanted to run pysph on Windows 10 under Python 2 7 and got vcvarsall bat was not found  from distutils   My solution was the following   Install Microsoft Visual C   for Python 2 7  like  Michael suggested   On Windows 10 it was installed into  my username is Andreas    C  Users Andreas AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python 9 0   Set environment variable VS90COMNTOOLS to the installation path of Visual C   for Python 2 7  see above path    If it still doesn t work  then modifiy in the module  C  Python27 lib distutils   the file msvc9compiler py  Find in it the function find vcvarsall and do following modification   Replace the line   productdir   os path join toolsdir  os pardir  os pardir   VC     with  productdir   os path join toolsdir    This is where vcvarsall bat resides in my case  check  where vcvarsall bat is in your installation

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You can install compiled version from http   www lfd uci edu  gohlke pythonlibs

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I had the same error when I tried to install pandas in windows 10  After searching several solutions  I ended up with the use of wheel   First of all  upgrade pip to the newest version   easy install install -U pip   Second  install wheel   pip install wheel   Third  download the whl file for your package and install it   pip install  xxx  whl   So far  I believe wheel is the best way to install Python packages on windows

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I found the solution   I had the exact same problem  and error  installing  amara   I had mingw32 installed  but distutils needed to be configured    I have Python 2 6 that was already installed  I installed mingw32 to C  programs mingw  Add mingw32 s bin directory to your environment variable  append c  programs MinGW bin  to the PATH Edit  create if not existing  distutils cfg file located at C  Python26 Lib distutils distutils cfg to be      build  compiler mingw32  Now run easy install exe amara    Make sure environment is set by opening a new cmd exe

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If you have mingw installed  pip install --global-option build ext --global-option --compiler mingw32 packagename   works  forcing pip to build using the mingw compiler instead of Microsoft s  See here https   github com pypa pip issues 18 for details  last post

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I don t know if it is too late  but I found Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7 which reads     The typical error message you will receive if you need this compiler package is Unable to find vcvarsall bat   Hope this helps

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If you re looking to install pyodbc on a Windows box that doesn t have Visual Studio installed another option is to manually install pyodbc using the binary distribution   This is particularly useful if you do not have administrator privileges on the machine you re working with and are trying to set up a virtualenv   Steps    Download the latest Windows installer from here  pyodbc-X X X win-Y-py2 7 exe  Open the installer executable using 7-Zip  or WinRAR or whatever  Extract pyodbc pyd and pyodbc-X X X-py2 7 egg-info and place them in  python installation directory or virtualenv  Lib site-packages There is no step 4

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I have python 2 73 and windows 7  The solution that worked for me was    Added mingw32 s bin directory to environment variable  append PATH with C  programs mingw bin  Created distutils cfg located at C  Python27 Lib distutils distutils cfg containing      build  compiler mingw32    To deal with MinGW not recognizing the -mno-cygwin flag anymore  remove the flag in C  Python27 Lib distutils cygwincompiler py line 322 to 326  so it looks like this     self set executables compiler  gcc -O -Wall                            compiler so  gcc -mdll -O -Wall                            compiler cxx  g   -O -Wall                            linker exe  gcc                            linker so   s  s  s                                         self linker dll  shared option                                         entry point

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The best and exhaustive answer to this issue is given here  https   blogs msdn microsoft com pythonengineering 2016 04 11 unable-to-find-vcvarsall-bat   For most of cases it s enough to find the suitable  whl package for your required python dependency and install it with pip   In the last case you ll have to install microsoft compiler and install your package from source code

[python] error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

If you want to compile with Visual Studio C++ instead of mingw...

Notes for Visual Studio C++ 2008

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