How do I install PyCrypto on Windows?
I've read every other google source and SO thread, with nothing working.
Python 2.7.3 32bit installed on Windows 7 64bit. Download, extracting, and then trying to install PyCrypto results in "Unable to find vcvarsall.bat".
So I install MinGW and tack that on the install line as the compiler of choice. But then I get the error "RuntimeError: chmod error".
How in the world do I get around this? I've tried using pip, which gives the same result. I found a prebuilt PyCrypto 2.3 binary and installed that, but it's nowhere to be found on the system (not working).
Any ideas?
Solution 1:
If you don't already have a C/C++ development environment installed that is compatible with the Visual Studio binaries distributed by Python.org, then you should stick to installing only pure Python packages or packages for which a Windows binary is available.
Fortunately, there are PyCrypto binaries available for Windows: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml#pycrypto
UPDATE:
As @Udi suggests in the comment below, the following command also installs pycrypto and can be used in virtualenv as well:
easy_install http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/pycrypto-2.6.1/pycrypto-2.6.1.win32-py2.7.exe
Notice to choose the relevant link for your setup from this list
If you're looking for builds for Python 3.5, see PyCrypto on python 3.5
Solution 2:
Microsoft has recently recently released a standalone, dedicated Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7. If you're using Python 2.7, simply install that compiler and Setuptools 6.0 or later, and most packages with C extensions will now compile readily.
Solution 3:
After years and years, python finally agreed for a binary disribution called wheel which allows to install even binary extensions on Windows without having a compiler with simple pip install packagename. There is a list of popular packages with their status. Pycrypto is not there yet, but lxml, PySide and Scrapy for example.
Edited Nov 2015: pip uninstall pycrypto & pip install pycryptodome. It is a pycrypto fork with new features and it supports wheel. It replaces pycrypto, so existing code will continue to work (see https://pycryptodome.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/examples.html)
Solution 4:
For VS2010:
SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS100COMNTOOLS%
For VS2012:
SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS110COMNTOOLS%
then Call:
pip install pyCrypto
Solution 5:
In general
vcvarsall.bat is part of the Visual C++ compiler, you need that to install what you are trying to install. Don't even try to deal with MingGW if your Python was compiled with Visual Studio toolchain and vice versa. Even the version of the Microsoft tool chain is important. Python compiled with VS 2008 won't work with extensions compiled with VS 2010!
You have to compile PyCrypto with the same compiler that the version of Python was compiled with. Google for "Unable to find vcvarsall.bat" because that is the root of your problem, it is a very common problem with compiling Python extensions on Windows.
There is a lot of information and a lot to read to get this right on whatever system you are on with this link.
Beware using Visual Studio 2010 or not using Visual Studio 2008
As far as I know the following is still true. This was posted in the link above in June, 2010 referring to trying to build extensions with VS 2010 Express against the Python installers available on python.org.
Be careful if you do this. Python 2.6 and 2.7 from python.org are built with Visual Studio 2008 compilers. You will need to link with the same CRT (msvcr90.dll) as Python.
Visual Studio 2010 Express links with the wrong CRT version: msvcr100.dll.
If you do this, you must also re-build Python with Visual Studio 2010 Express. You cannot use the standard Python binary installer for Windows. Nor can you use any C/C++ extensions built with a different compiler than Visual Studio 2010 (Express).
Opinion: This is one reason I abandoned Windows for all serious development work for OSX!