How to install Python package from source on Windows

[Michael Torrie]

On 05/25/2017 10:09 AM, Deborah Swanson wrote:
> Could be, maybe it's something they do for every installation, whether
> it will use it or not. But it always breaks when it can't install Visual
> Studio. Upgrade pip does run and it works up to that point. It gets as
> far as uninstalling the old pip, but then there's no way to get any pip
> reinstalled.

I just fired up my Windows XP SP3 virtual machine, which has no
development tools whatsoever on it (no VS, nothing). I installed 32-bit
Python 3.4 from the official python.org download. Then I did the pip
upgrade:

C:\Python34>python -m pip install -U pip
Collecting pip
  Downloading pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.3MB)
    100% |################################| 1.3MB 137kB/s
Installing collected packages: pip
  Found existing installation: pip 7.1.2
    Uninstalling pip-7.1.2:
      Successfully uninstalled pip-7.1.2
Successfully installed pip-9.0.1

C:\Python34>python -m pip install recordclass
Collecting recordclass
  Downloading recordclass-0.4.3-cp34-cp34m-win32.whl
Installing collected packages: recordclass
Successfully installed recordclass-0.4.3


I'm not sure what's wrong with your python installation but it has
nothing to do with Windows XP or Visual Studio.  It might help if you
cut and paste the exact errors you are seeing.  Also did you mention
before whether you're running the standard Python 3.4 package from
python.org or are you running some third-party system? I thought you
mentioned something about anaconda.

Anyway I can confirm that VS is not required for installing and using
pip on XP, nor is it required for recordclass, since it's available in
wheel form.