Hacker's ramblings

Couple years ago, I got a new Windows computer and my Python pip failed to install required modules as no suitable C/C++ -compiler was found. I obviously figured out what was wrong and how to right the wrong and posted an article about the fix.

As always, things change, new tools are made available and old tools are obsoleted. This fact was pointed out by an aggressive reader. Without doubt, he did fumble with versions and became irritated when I pointed that out. However, also without doubt, the blog post's expiration date was in the past. What worked in 2021 didn't work anymore.

Here's the update.

Given Wheel, build tools aren't required as often as they used to. See What Are Python Wheels and Why Should You Care? for details on this modern approach. Copy/pasting from the article: "A wheel is a type of built distribution. In this case, built means that the wheel comes in a ready-to-install format and allows you to skip the build stage required with source distributions."

On my Python 3.10 and 3.11, Visual Studio Build Tools 2017 do work. I tested the latest 2022 version and it does not. Older build tools come harder and harder to obtain from Microsoft. Visual Studio 2022 - Downloads -page @ Microsoft doesn't seem to carry old stuff nymore. To not confuse/irritate other people, I won't even post the link there.

As many people have this same exact problem, there is for example a question in StackOverflow: Are Visual Studio 2017 Build Tools still available for download? [closed]. Mr. Chris Wright's answer will have the link https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/vs_buildtools.exe. So, download isn't lost forever. Little bit obscured, yes, but not lost.

To test new Build Tools, I deliberately uninstalled my perfectly working Visual Studio 2017 build tools and Visual Studio 2022 and whatnot. A completely clean slate. Next, make a point on how build will fail. See how much effort it takes for not to use wheels! Running following will emit the dreaded error:

pip.exe install pyOpenSSL --no-binary :all: --no-cache-dir

Yay, the expected error will be emitted: error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required. Get it with "Microsoft C++ Build Tools"

This part isn't changed, I'm using the old images from two years back. Download and install Visual Studio Build Tools 2017. Make sure to install a few gigabytes of binaries by selecting C/C++ compiler version 140:

Ta-daa! Unsurprisingly re-running the forced build-from-source -command will work:

Collecting pyOpenSSL
  Downloading pyOpenSSL-23.0.0.tar.gz (182 kB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: pyOpenSSL
  Building wheel for pyOpenSSL(pyproject.toml) ... done
Successfully built pyOpenSSL
Installing collected packages: pyOpenSSL
Successfully installed pyOpenssl-23.0.0

This works in all those Python versions I tried. While testing, I did find some packages which wouldn't compile at all. The wheel installed just fine, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Final words:
It is weird how regular people in the Internet assume, that I as a blogger would have massive resources and money to maintain their systems. Why would I want to be a target of their inability to ask smart questions or ever explain what they attempted and what failed. Somehow I'm supposed to read their minds and see what's on their computer screens telepathically. Free of charge, of course!