npm install for some packages (sqlite3, socket.io) fail with error MSB8020 on Windows 7
When trying to install some node.js packages (sqlite3 and socket.io in particular) using npm install socket.io on my Windows 7 machine with Visual Studio 2012 (and not 2010) I had some failures that looked like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V110\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(35,5): error MSB8020: The builds tools for Visual Studio 2010 (Platform Toolset = 'v100') cannot be found. To build using the v100 build tools, either click the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then select "Update VC++ Projects...". Install Visual Studio 2010 to build using the Visual Studio 2010 build tools.
To get around this on my machine I did this command to install the package:
npm install socket.io --msvs_version=2012
I found the answer here when having the problem with installing sqlite3 and it worked with socket.io as well.
These might be more permanent solutions to fix the problem:
- Install Visual Studio 2010
- Updating the npm internal copy to a newer version of node-gyp as described here and here (probably the better option although I didn't get it working but didn't try for too long)
Another option is to change config instead of specifying msvs_version every time:
npm config set msvs_version 2012