How to install python-levenshtein on Windows?

Question

After searching for days I'm about ready to give up finding precompiled binaries for Python 2.7 (Windows 64-bit) of the Python Levenshtein library, so not I'm attempting to compile it myself. I've installed the most recent version of MinGW32 (version 0.5-beta-20120426-1) and set it as the default compiler in distutils.

Here we go:

C:\Users\tomas>pip install python-levenshtein
Downloading/unpacking python-levenshtein
  Running setup.py egg_info for package python-levenshtein

    warning: no files found matching '*' under directory 'docs'
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*pyc' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '.project' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '.pydevproject' found anywhere in distribution
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): setuptools in c:\python27\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg (from python-levenshtein)
Installing collected packages: python-levenshtein
  Running setup.py install for python-levenshtein
    building 'Levenshtein' extension
    C:\MinGW\bin\gcc.exe -mno-cygwin -mdll -O -Wall -IC:\Python27\include -IC:\Python27\PC -c Levenshtein.c -o build\temp.win-amd64-2.7\Release\levenshtein.o
    cc1.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '-mno-cygwin'
    error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
    Complete output from command C:\Python27\python.exe -c "import setuptools;__file__='c:\\users\\tomas\\appdata\\local\\temp\\pip-build\\python-levenshtein\\setup.py';exec(compile(open(__file__).rea
d().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record c:\users\tomas\appdata\local\temp\pip-7txyhp-record\install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed:
    running install

running build

running build_ext

building 'Levenshtein' extension

C:\MinGW\bin\gcc.exe -mno-cygwin -mdll -O -Wall -IC:\Python27\include -IC:\Python27\PC -c Levenshtein.c -o build\temp.win-amd64-2.7\Release\levenshtein.o

cc1.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '-mno-cygwin'

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

And now I'm stuck. I'm assuming that the -mno-cygwin option is outdated and no longer valid for the version of gcc that I have. If that is the case, I still have no clue how to fix that.

Thanks for any help anybody can offer on this issue.

---

EDIT:

I ran the compile line manually after removing the bad option:

C:\MinGW\bin\gcc.exe -mdll -O -Wall -IC:\Python27\include -IC:\Python27\PC -c Levenshtein.c -o build\temp.win-amd64-2.7\Release\levenshtein.o

Which successfully provided levenshtein.o in the build folder, but when I try to run python setup.py install then it just tries to build again and fails. Where can I remove -mno-cygwin? I assume it's somewhere in the source of distutils but I can't find it.

Answer 1

if you use Anaconda, try:

conda install -c conda-forge python-levenshtein

Answer 2

For a 64-bit install that's as easy as pip, try: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#python-levenshtein