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?

Did any of these solutions work for you? Don't forget to accept one! — Nathaniel Ford, Sep 09 '15 at 23:48
Running python or pip install commands from the Visual Studio Tools command prompt (in your start menu) usually fixes problems compiling any python extension — Bron Davies, Aug 05 '16 at 16:42

score 44 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 14 '13 at 20:57

44

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%

edited Jul 14 '13 at 20:57

Blorgbeard

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answered Jan 16 '12 at 19:04

CadentOrange

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The official Python build for Windows is build using Visual Studio 2008, and from looking at the sources it explicitly looks for VS90COMNTOOLS. VS10COMNTOOLS is created by the visual studio installer, so feel free to take up issues of consistency with Microsoft :) – CadentOrange Jul 30 '12 at 09:02
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Strange, my Visual Studio 2010 installer created VS100COMNTOOLS – Dunc Jul 31 '12 at 10:34
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Be that as it may, it's not the issue. It's not the environment variable Python looks for, so you need to create the relevant environment variable (i.e. VS90COMNTOOLS) and have it point to your VS 2010 common tools folder. – CadentOrange Jul 31 '12 at 11:34
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On my vs2012 install, VCVARSALL.BAT was located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC and not at the above location. I included it in the path and it seems to work. – Simon Woods Apr 19 '13 at 08:18
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I also have this issue now where I do not have a Visual Studio 11.0 folder and cannot install due to having a newer version VS2013. Is it definitely okay to just point VS110 to newer versions? Is there no downside here? Also why is it explicitly looking for VS110, is this bad setup? i.e. it should look for the latest one not a specific one? – shicky Mar 19 '14 at 17:40
It did not work for me, although I got further than without this trick. I followed exactly what was mentioned in the Answer, and got the follwoing error message: "'\cl.exe' failed with exit status 2". This was a Visual Studio 2010 compiler and Python 2.7. Do I really need to install Visual Studio 2008, just for the compiler? – physicalattraction Jul 10 '14 at 12:15

alfonso · Answer 2 · 2015-08-15T13:58:11.210

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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.

edited Aug 15 '15 at 13:58

answered Nov 30 '14 at 05:45

alfonso

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`pip install --upgrade setuptools` solved my problems as well (was unable to install several packages in jetbrains pycharm), ran from 'C:\Python27\Scripts' in windows 7 – ippi Mar 31 '15 at 04:56
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This is a much simpler solution than I've seen suggested elsewhere - no messing around with visual studio. Thanks. – cs_stackX Jul 27 '15 at 05:27
did not do the trick for me... same error. I have VS2010 and VS2013 installed – IceFire Jan 30 '16 at 11:53
@IceFire, my solution never claimed to be a solution involving Visual Studio, so it's irrelevant to me which version you have. It's surprising you downvoted the answer since it didn't work in your specific instance. Perhaps you have some deeper underlying technical issues to take care of. It's like you came to the doctor complaining of a headache and getting mad when he gives you paracetamol when you really have the flu. – alfonso Feb 01 '16 at 15:27
VS has to be involved anyways, when you use vcvarsall.bat, the whole Python-related issue is based on being dependant on this file. The information that I have VS10/13 is just additional. There is a question with a problem and your solution does not help it in my case. I downvote such answers so that answers that work in a broader range of cases get to the top faster... no personal insult intended :) – IceFire Feb 02 '16 at 09:55
It doesn't have much to do Visual Studio.The underlying issue is that you need a C compiler and a way for Python to recognize it. Visual Studio provides a compiler, so it's one way to solve your prolem. If your setuptools is up to date, and the compiler I link to doesn't work, and installing Visual Studio isn't doing the trick, then maybe research which compiler you need for your specific versions of Windows and Python or figure out if there's anything wrong with your specific machine's configuration. There's really no one size fits all answer for that. – alfonso Feb 02 '16 at 17:53

score 14 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 30 '13 at 11:38

14

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.

edited Jun 30 '13 at 11:38

Saullo G. P. Castro

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answered Jun 28 '11 at 00:28

fileoffset

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Yes, whilst the path issue above seemed likely, this one solved the probelm witout a reboot. Nice one – lifeisstillgood Sep 25 '11 at 20:27
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+1 for mentioning the "starting a new command prompt after installing". This was the cause of my problem :) – Alex Okrushko May 07 '12 at 20:14

score 9 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

9

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

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Apr 01 '15 at 23:38

Ravi Kumar

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I agree, it's horrendous that Python still isn't better supporting the compilation of C/C++ extensions, even though lots of extensions need that to be installed. – gaborous Apr 05 '15 at 16:17
This is the same solution I wrote! – alfonso Jul 14 '15 at 14:06
And you improved your answers gradually. Do you want me to delete my answer? – Ravi Kumar Aug 17 '15 at 16:06
Thanks for the information - unfortunately I *still* can't get this to work as setuptools complains "Cannot remove entries from nonexistent file" - so I can't update it. I have four different versions of Visual Studio (including 2008 and 2010) installed, and the MS Visual C++ compiler for Python, and still getting the same error. It's bizarre that this is so difficult, it's just a c compiler! Anyway, I'm going to try MinGW next, and after that put my head trhrough a brick wall probably. – Giswok Nov 30 '15 at 17:24

gaborous · Answer 5 · 2015-12-01T20:59:36.230

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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

edited Dec 01 '15 at 20:59

answered Apr 05 '15 at 19:21

gaborous

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Hi gaborous, could you provide a bit more detail on step 2 please? Where can I find that command prompt? Thanks – Giswok Nov 30 '15 at 17:34
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@Giswok This is installed with "Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python", you should find a shortcut in your start menu. – gaborous Nov 30 '15 at 22:06
Thanks @gaborous, I didn't find it at first because it doesn't come up in the start meniu search bar! That seems to have produced some progress; I'm now getting `fatal error LNK1117: syntax error in option \`MANIFEST:EMBED,ID=2`. Not sure whether that's because it's not supported by distutils or something unrelated. I'll keep trying. – Giswok Dec 01 '15 at 10:37
@Giswok this is a weird error, I never had it. Try to run the prompt as an admin, and if that doesn't work, well, you'll probably have to try to reinstall your whole Python + C++ compiler from scratch :( Also make sure that you have Python 2.7, this compiler doesn't work for any other version of Python. – gaborous Dec 01 '15 at 12:29
@glaborous Yes that'll be it - I'm running Python 3.5. I'd hoped it might still work as nothing else has yet! Thanks anyway. – Giswok Dec 01 '15 at 12:51
@Giswok It's not that it doesn't work anymore, it's because this mini-compiler was specifically made for Python 2.7. Microsoft could release mini-compilers for other versions of Python, but they don't. But you can still install Microsoft Visual Studio to get the C++ compiler for any Python (just make sure that the VS version you choose has a DLL version that is compatible to compile your Python version, I updated the answer with a link). – gaborous Dec 01 '15 at 20:57
I wasn't clear: yes that's what I meant. The link you've added doesn't work for Python 3.5 - for that you need Visual Studio 2015. The only place I was able to find this information was here: http://blog.ionelmc.ro/2014/12/21/compiling-python-extensions-on-windows/, perhaps add that to your answer also? – Giswok Dec 02 '15 at 10:33
@Giswok this is normal, Python is always compiled against the latest VS available at the time, so it changes from version to version (sometimes even between minor versions). Thank's for the link, I added it to the Cython wiki, I guess this will reach more people like that. – gaborous Dec 02 '15 at 18:44
In my case, I was able to mount up the VS 2015 ISO and under "Languages", select "C++" and "Phython Tools" (not verbatim, but obvious) and when those were done installing, I had the missing .bat – rainabba Jan 27 '17 at 21:33

score 5 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 30 '13 at 11:39

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>" 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\

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:33

4

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

edited May 23 '17 at 11:33

Community

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answered Oct 07 '14 at 05:13

kag0

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score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 07 '11 at 13:31

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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.

edited Nov 07 '11 at 13:31

CharlesB

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answered Apr 19 '10 at 13:33

Craig McQueen

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Hey, Thanks for the input. What actually worked was to remove the 2010 version and install the 2008 version. changing the path did not work. thanks again – Ariel Apr 20 '10 at 12:06
Good to hear you've got it working. I'm sure in future, the gurus will explain how to compile Python and its modules with VS 2010. – Craig McQueen Apr 20 '10 at 13:19
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Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.0, 3.1 will always require VS2008, because this contains the correct version of the C runtime that they were linked to. If you try to link the python DLLs to the C runtime that comes with VS2010, it will not work. – Jonathan Hartley Jul 16 '10 at 16:17
@JonathanHartley, can you provide a reference for that, so we can look up further details? E.g. I'm curious how this works for platforms that don't have VS2008, such as Linux. – LarsH May 22 '14 at 10:08
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Hey @LarsH. Here in the Python dev guide: [https://docs.python.org/devguide/setup.html#windows]. Platforms other than Windows can use any C89 or C99-compliant compiler, gcc is fine. – Jonathan Hartley Jun 06 '14 at 08:34

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 21 '16 at 21:40

3

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.

answered Jan 21 '16 at 21:40

Guillaume Lebreton

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To elaborate you need to find it in the drop down list of the Install Wizard. .bat file is not there! – Little Bobby Tables Feb 25 '16 at 15:16

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 12 '16 at 06:19

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.

vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64 This file oesn't exist man, Visual studio 2015 i m having ,rest of ur explanation was perfect upvoted. HELP — ErrorrrDetector, Oct 13 '16 at 17:56

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 09 '16 at 13:00

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

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Jan 15 '15 at 10:05

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

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Apr 14 '15 at 16:06

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.

score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Dec 01 '15 at 17:27

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/

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered May 28 '15 at 20:52

0

Install Visual Studio Express 2008 (9.0) from here: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7729279

That's what fixed it for me.

answered May 28 '15 at 20:52

wordsforthewise

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score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Mar 15 '16 at 12:24

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

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Jun 16 '16 at 10:54

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.

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Mar 26 '21 at 04:39

I was getting also this error error: Microsoft Visual C++ 10.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat).

I used .whl file for installation.

C:\Users\Python\Python34\Scripts>pip install C:\Users\Downloads\Cython-0.28-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

Cython-0.28-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.

rename cp34m to none in .whl file and then try.

C:\Users\Python\Python34\Scripts>pip install C:\Users\Downloads\Cython-0.28-cp34-none-win_amd64.whl

Processing c:\users\downloads\cython-0.28-cp34-none-win_amd64.whl

Installing collected packages: Cython

Successfully installed Cython-0.28

Cannot find vcvarsall.bat when running a Python script

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