Installing C++ compilers for Python 2.7 libraries

Installing C++ compilers for Python 2.7 libraries

If you encounter errors like, "unable to find vcvarsall.bat" when installing Python dependencies,
you are probably missing C++ compilers needed to compile python libraries. To fix this issue, 
install Micsrosoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable 64 bit.

Building on the solution provided here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/18045219/888278

Download specifically the Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 which gives you a x64 compiler for VC++ 2008 (VC++ 9.0) if you need it. 

Note: If you have both a 32- and 64-bit Python installation, you may also want to use virtualenv to create separate Python environments to use one or the other at a time without messing with your path to choose which Python version to use.

Open up a cmd.exe

Before you try installing something which requires C extensions, run the following batch file to load the VC++ compiler's environment into the session (i.e. environment variables, the path to the compiler, etc).

Execute:

32-bit Compilers:

Note: 32-bit Windows installs will only have C:\Program Files\ as expected

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"

64-bit Compilers:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars64.bat"

If that went well, you should get one of the following messages depending on which command you ran:

For the 32-bit compiler tools:
Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 x86 tools.

For the 64-bit compiler tools:
Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 x64 tools.

Now, run the setup via python setup.py install or pip install pkg-name