Error exit status 2 trying to install PIL with pip in virtualenv on windows 7

Question

Trying to install PIL via pip in my virtualenv. However I get this error.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN\cl.exe /c /nologo /Ox /MD /W3 /GS- /DNDEBUG -IlibImaging -Ic:\My_Pro
jects\testenv\include -Ic:\My_Projects\testenv\PC /Tc_imaging.c /Fobuild\temp.win32-2.7\Release\_imaging.obj

_imaging.c

_imaging.c(75) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'Python.h': No such file or directory

error: command '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN\cl.exe"' failed with exit status 2

----------------------------------------
Command c:\My_Projects\testenv\Scripts\python.exe -c "import setuptools;__file__='C:\\My_Projects\\testenv\\pinax-solcia
l-site\\build\\PIL\\setup.py';execfile(__file__)" install --single-version-externally-managed --record c:\users\darren\a
ppdata\local\temp\pip-fdzgwn-record\install-record.txt failed with error code 1
Storing complete log in C:\Users\Darren\AppData\Roaming\pip\pip.log

I looked over at this question which suggests installing python-dev but that user was on Ubuntu. I'm on WIndows 7 and not sure how to solve my issue.

Thanks.

Answer 1

It looks as if the VisualStudio compiler is not finding the Python development sources. Maybe you need to set a specific environment variable?

This blog post seems to suggest that you need to add c:\Python27 and c:\Python27\bin to your path. Maybe that's what is missing?

PIL is also known for having issues with setuptools. Have you tried pillow?