ValueError when using pip or easy_install to install a package into winpython

Question

Currently doing a science course and using python to do calculations and plotting. The Uni uses winpython 2.7.5.3 This is the version I've installed as it has all the standard packages I need. I'm using windows 7 64bit

However my course has started diverging and I need to install additional packages, specifically Astropy.

Initially I had a vcvarsall.bat error, this was fixed by installing Visual C++ 2008 express.

After this both the included version 1.4.1 of pip and easy_install-2.7 find the correct packages but on installing give me an error:

File "C:\WinPython\python-2.7.5.amd64\lib\distutils\msvc9compiler.py", line 29 9, in query_vcvarsall

raise ValueError(str(list(result.keys())))

ValueError: [u'path']

I am unfortunately stuck at this point. This is the first of a few packages I need to install, hopefully this is a single error I can fix for all of them

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not too familiar with Windows, but I would suggest trying to use a Python distribution such as Anaconda Python Distribution or Enthought Canopy which should both have Windows versions, and include a whole bunch of packages by default (including Numpy, Scipy, IPython, Matplotlib, and Astropy). The first is free, while the second has free licenses for students and academics.