Problems installing Python Fabric on Windows 7

Question

I'm trying to install Python Fabric on Windows 7 using the guide from Getting Python and Fabric Installed on Windows.

What i did so far:

• Installed Python 2.7 to C:\Python27
• Added the Python-Directory and Python/Scripts to the Windows System Paths
• Installed SetupTools
• Installed MinGW
• Added MinGW-Directory to the System Path
• Modified the distutils.cfg to match the MinGW-Path

This seemed to work fine until now. When I try to install Fabric via easy_install Fabric it starts to download the files, but then i get an chmod error.

Using c:\python27\lib\site-packages\fabric-1.3.4-py2.7.egg  
Processing dependencies for fabric  
Searching for pycrypto>=2.1,!=2.4  
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/pycrypto/  
Reading http://pycrypto.sourceforge.net  
Reading http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto  
Reading http://www.pycrypto.org/  
Best match: pycrypto 2.5  
Downloading http://ftp.dlitz.net/pub/dlitz/crypto/pycrypto/pycrypto-2.5.tar.gz  
Processing pycrypto-2.5.tar.gz  
Running pycrypto-2.5\setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir   c:\users\birgit\appdata\local\temp\easy_install-nzrlow\pycrypto-2.5\egg-dist-tmp-_pwkm4  
The command "chmod" is spelled wrong or could not be found.

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:\Python27\Scripts\easy_install-script.py", line 8, in <module> load_entry_point('setuptools==0.6c12dev-r88846', 'console_scripts', 'easy_install')()  
 File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88846-py2.7.egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 1712, in main  

 ... lots and lots of lines... (if they are relevant, I'll post them)

 File "C:\Python27\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 972, in run_command cmd_obj.run()  
 File "setup.py", line 269, in run  
RuntimeError: chmod error  

Any suggestions to solve the problem?

Answer 1

I have just managed to install fabric on win7 box, using information from various places in the net. That was really annoying, so just to save others frustration I put together the following list.

1. Install pip http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/index.html (that's easy, follow the guide on the web site, goes without problems)
2. run from command line pip install fabric - you'll get errors, some stuff about missing bat files, etc. while installing pycrypto.
3. Download precompiled pycrypto package from http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/ for your version of Python, for instance for 2.7 it is http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/pycrypto-2.1.0.win32-py2.7.zip
4. run again from command line pip install fabric - this time everything seems to be ok, until you try to run fabric script. It will complain about "No module named win32api", etc.
5. Install that missing win32api from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/ - first choose a build version (newest, probably) and then again .exe file for your Python version.

And you are done, fabric should work ok.

Answer 2

have you tried a binary installer from Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages: Base distribution may contain Fabric.