Cannot find vcvarsall bat when running a Python script

Question

I am working on Vista  and using Python 2 6 4  I am using a software that utilizes a Python script  but bumped into the message   cannot find vcvarsall bat   So  I installed visual c   2010  Still the file is not found - though  it is there  My guess  a very uneducated one     is that somewhere the path is wrong  because I also have an old visual 2008  pretty empty  folder  I have no idea where to make the changes for the new path  Do I change something in the registry or in the script  Or somewhere else

User · Answer

The solution to this problem is to set the following environment variable:

VS90COMNTOOLS

For instance:

set VS90COMNTOOLS=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools

This error can be caused by not rebooting after installing Visual Studios, or not starting a new command prompt after installing.

Also the version of Visual Studios you can use to compile the extensions may depend on the version of python you are building for.

User · Answer

Here s a simple solution  I m using Python 2 7 and Windows 7   What you re trying to install requires a C C   compiler but Python isn t finding it  A lot of Python packages are actually written in C C   and need to be compiled  vcvarsall bat is needed to compile C   and pip is assuming your machine can do that    Try upgrading setuptools first  because v6 0 and above will automatically detect a compiler  You might already have a compiler but Python can t find it  Open up a command line and type   pip install --upgrade setuptools Now try and install your package again   pip install  yourpackagename  If that didn t work  then it s certain you don t have a compiler  so you ll need to install one   http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 44266 Now try again   pip install  yourpackagename    And there you go  It should work for you

User · Answer

After trying every option available on every thread  I decided to dig into the source to find a solution   Edit your  PythonPath Lib distutils  msvccompiler py  Find def  find vcvarsall plat spec   Add as the next line  add      PathToVC r C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 VC vcvarsall bat      return PathToVC  r     And then make sure your visual studio bin directory is in your path   If this doesn t work  there are other files you may need to edit including     PythonPath Lib distutils msvc9compiler py  PythonPath Lib site-packages setuptools msvc9 support py

User · Answer

It seems that Python is looking explicitly for Visual Studio 2008  I encountered this problem  where it couldn t find vcvarsall bat even though it was on the path   It turns out that Visual Studio 2010 creates the following environment variable   SET VS100COMNTOOLS C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools    The fix is to create a variable called VS90COMNTOOLS and have that point to your Visual Studio 2010 common tools folder  e g   SET VS90COMNTOOLS C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools    That fixed it for me and I can now build packages using the Visual Studio 2010 compiler    You can also set the VS90 environment variable to point to the VS100 environment variable using the command below   SET VS90COMNTOOLS  VS100COMNTOOLS

User · Answer

THIS IS AN UP TO DATE ANSWER FOR WINDOWS USERS - VERY SIMPLE SOLUTION   As pointed out by other  the problem is that python cython etc  tries to find the same compiler they were built from  but this compiler does not exist on the computer  Most of the time  this compiler is a version of visual studio  2008  2010 or 2013   but either such a compiler is not installed  or a newer version is installed and the system prevents from installing an older one  So  the solution is simple    1  look at C  Program Files  x86  and see if there is an installed version of Microsoft visual studio  and if it is newer than the version from which Python has been built  If not  install  update to  the version from which Python has been built  see previous answers   or even a newest version and follow the next step   2 If a newest version of Microsoft visual studio is already installed  we have to make Python cython etc  believe that it is the version from which it has been built  And this is very simple  go to the the system environment variables and create the following variables  if they do not exist   VS100COMNTOOLS   VS110COMNTOOLS   VS120COMNTOOLS   VS140COMNTOOLS  And set the field of these variables to    C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools   if visual studio 2008 is installed   or   C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 Common7 Tools   if visual studio 2010 is installed  or   C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 Common7 Tools   if visual studio 2013 is installed  or  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 Common7 Tools   if visual studio 2015 is installed    This solution works for 32 bit versions of python  It may also work for 64 bit version but I ve not tested  most probably  for 64 bit versions  the following additional steps must be performed   3 add the path  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC  to the  PATH  environment variable  change the number of the version of visual studio according to you version    4  from the command line  run  vcvarsall bat x86 amd64    That s all

User · Answer

Note that there is a very simple solution    Download the software from http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 44266 and install it  Find the installing directory  it is something like  C  Users USER NAME AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python  Change the directory name  C  Users USER NAME AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python 9 0   to  C  Users USER NAME AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python VC  Add a new environment variable  VS90COMNTOOLS  and its value is  C  Users USER NAME AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python VC VC    Now everything is OK

User · Answer

this worked for me  python 2 6     installed free ms visual studio 2008 from http   www microsoft com visualstudio en-us products 2008-editions express  copied vcvarsall bat from  C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 VC gt   to  C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 Common7 Tools    the installer had already set this environment variable   VS90COMNTOOLS C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 Common7 Tools

User · Answer

Install Visual Studio Express 2008  9 0  from here  http   go microsoft com  linkid 7729279  That s what fixed it for me

User · Answer

If you had installed Visual studio 2015 by the quick install  vcvarsall bat is not there  But you can go to programm and fonctionalities  and modify the installation in order to install c   tools  then vcvarsall bat will be present

User · Answer

This cryptic error means that you don t have a C compiler installed  There was a discussion to propose a more explanative error  which is continued here  register and comment if you care about it   but currently it is still not implemented   To fix this issue you can either install the Visual Studio 2008 SDK which will take about a GB  or you can install the very small VCForPython27 msi but which is not well supported by distutils currently  here s the procedure   1  install Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7 from http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 44266 2  Enter MSVC for Python command prompt 3  SET DISTUTILS USE SDK 1 4  SET MSSdk 1 5  you can then build your C extensions  python exe setup py       Steps 2 to 4 must be reproduced everytime before building your C extensions  This is because of an issue with the VCForPython27 msi which install the header files and vcvarsall bat in folders of a different layout than the VS2008 SDK and thus confuse the compiler detection of distutils  This will get fixed in setuptools in Python 2 7 10   Bug report and workaround by Gregory Szorc  http   bugs python org issue23246  More info and a workaround for using   cython magic inside IPython  https   github com cython cython wiki CythonExtensionsOnWindows   EDIT  Also  if you have another version of Python  you cannot use Microsoft Visual C   for Python 2 7  which is a kind of mini-compiler specifically made by Microsoft for Python 2 7  In this case  you need to install the Visual Studio SDK that match your Python version  or a Windows SDK with the correct NET framework version  See here for more infos  https   github com cython cython wiki CythonExtensionsOnWindows using-windows-sdk-cc-compiler-works-for-all-python-versions

User · Answer

I tried the solution here to set an environment variable via the command line  but this didn t work  I did this both from a regular command prompt and from the Visual Studio Developer command prompt   I could overcome this problem like this    go to the Environment variables screen and created a new variable there VS100COMNTOOLS and let it point to my Visual Studio installation folder C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 Common7 Tools  Go to the above folder  Inside this folder there is the file vsvars32 bat  Copy this file and rename it to vsvarsall bat   My configuration is Visual Studio 2013  12 0  and Python 3 4 2

User · Answer

Looks like MS has released the exact package needed here  BurnBit here  Install it and then set the registry keys in this answer to point to C  Users username AppData Local Programs Common Microsoft Visual C   for Python 9 0

User · Answer

In case anyone comes here looking for an answer for Python 3 5  you need Visual Studio 2015   Get Visual Studio 2015 Community here  https   www visualstudio com en-us downloads visual-studio-2015-downloads-vs aspx  this worked for me with no further steps needed   Many thanks to Ionel  apparently the only place on the web to find this information  http   blog ionelmc ro 2014 12 21 compiling-python-extensions-on-windows

User · Answer

After installation of Visual Studio Community 2015 Edition on Windows 10 64 bit  This error did not go  Then I install Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7  Since it requires vcvarsall bat file  This file is no where in Visual studio Community 2015  but it was in Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7  I also added its path into my environment variables but it also did not work  Then I un-install python 3 4 2 and deleted all the folders of python  and installed python 2 7  Finally I run pip using powershell and I was able to install my required package i e  flask-user  by using   pip install flask-user

User · Answer

There is a confusing edge case for this on windows  If you follow the advice to install the 2007 windows  and you still get this error when doing python setup py install directly  then it may be that the setup py uses the old version of set up tools   In particular  the code that points windows towards the right location for the windows installed compiler is in the   init   method of the setuptools library  which means that you must in your setup py use the setuptools module  Some older setup py call methods directly from distutils core  If this is the case then the setup py will never find the windows installed compiler  This can be fixed by simply writing import setuptools as the first line of the setup py file   Reference  https   bugs python org issue23246  Look about half way down for the quote from steve dower      Setuptools has the code to find the compiler package  We deliberately put it there instead of in distutils to make sure more people would get it    I should probably port the extra check into 2 7 10  but the immediate fix is to import setuptools

User · Answer

In 2015  if you still getting this confusing error  blame python default setuptools that PIP uses   Download and install minimal Microsoft Visual C   Compiler for Python 2 7 required to compile python 2 7 modules from http   www microsoft com en-in download details aspx id 44266 Update your setuptools - pip install -U setuptools Install whatever python package you want that require C compilation  pip install blahblah  It will work fine  UPDATE  It won t work fine for all libraries   I still get some error with few modules  that require lib-headers  They only thing that work flawlessly is Linux platform

User · Answer

Installing Visual C   is a good first step  though I couldn t say for sure whether the 2010 version will work  Anyway give it a try   Look for vcvarsall bat in the Visual C   installation directory  for Visual Studio 2010 it s in ProgramFiles Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC   Then add that directory to the system path  If you re doing this on the command line  you can try   path  path  c  path to vs2010 bin   then try again to run whatever you were trying to run   For more permanent effect  add it in the computer system path settings

[python] Cannot find vcvarsall.bat when running a Python script

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