installing d3 using npm causes contextify errors

Question

Getting some mystifying contextify errors (but other installs seem to go fine.)

npm install d3

    MSBUILD : error MSB3428: Could not load the Visual C++ component "VCBuild.exe". To fix this, 1) install the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK, 2) install
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or 3) add the location of the component to the system path if it is installed elsewhere.  
[C:\Users\dinesh\m3\node_modules\d3\node_modules\jsdom\node_modules\contextify\build\binding.sln]
gyp ERR! build error
gyp ERR! stack Error: `C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe` failed with exit code: 1
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onExit (C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\lib\build.js:267:23)
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:98:17)
gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:810:12)
gyp ERR! System Windows_NT 6.1.7601
gyp ERR! command "node" "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\node_modules\\node-gyp\\bin\\node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd C:\Users\dinesh\m3\node_modules\d3\node_modules\jsdom\node_modules\contextify
gyp ERR! node -v v0.10.32
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v1.0.1
gyp ERR! not ok

npm ERR! [email protected] install: `node-gyp rebuild`
npm ERR! Exit status 1

npm ERR! node -v v0.10.32
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.28

Answer 1

You've probably moved on at this point, but for future googlers:

Upgrade to D3.js v3.5.4+

jsdom is a dependency of d3, and jsdom requires contextify, which uses native modules (node-gyp). Native modules are hard to build on some platforms, so d3 made jsdom a development dependency (not installed by default) as of v3.5.4.

Related: D3.js commit and D3.js issue.