Python package installation error - py_compiler msvc not found

Question

I'm trying to install the chatterbot package on Python 3.8.3 under Windows 10 64-bit and encountering a strange error that I suspect must be related to some directory or PATH setting which, I hope, is an easy fix... I just don't know how yet.

Basically the first time I tried to install chatterbot ( pip install chatterbot ) it failed as the Visual C++ 14.0 requirement was not met. I followed the instructions here to install Visual C++, restarted, ran pip install --upgrade setuptools and it returned that the requirement is already up to date, version 49.6.0.

I tried running pip install chatter again and now get a different error, see excerpt below. Basically it is happy that Visual C++ is there, but can't actually find the compiler.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Complete output (25 lines):
      BLIS_COMPILER? None
      running install
      running build
      running build_py
      creating build
      creating build\lib.win-amd64-3.8
      creating build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\about.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\benchmark.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\__init__.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      creating build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis\tests
      copying blis\tests\common.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis\tests
      copying blis\tests\test_dotv.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis\tests
      copying blis\tests\test_gemm.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis\tests
      copying blis\tests\__init__.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis\tests
      copying blis\cy.pyx -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\py.pyx -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\cy.pxd -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      copying blis\__init__.pxd -> build\lib.win-amd64-3.8\blis
      running build_ext
      error: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified
      msvc
      py_compiler msvc

Answer 1

I also had the same issue but now I think I found a work around this.

First I installed latest version of spacy. The blis compilation was needed for an old version of spacy. But latest version of spacy comes in a compiled version, so no need to use msvc.

pip install -U spacy 

Next, I installed chatterbot from the github source code.

git clone https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot.git
pip install ./ChatterBot

When you install latest version from ChatterBot repo, you will need to revise Chatterbot/setup.py to be compatible with Python3.8.x - for now it only supports <=3.8