NPM native builds with only Visual Studio 2013 installed

Question

I\'ve got a clean install of Windows with Visual Studio 2013 Pro installed, along with current versions of Python, node and npm.

I\'m trying to install the pg

Answer 1

I have too clean install of Windows 8.1 (64bit) Pro with Visual Studio 2013 only (no previous version of VS, although some components came with SQL Server 2014). The npm install command failed with similar error.

So I tried to specify VS version

npm install --msvs_version=2013 

It started correctly using Platform Toolset 'v120' but the build failed with the following error (note the V110 used in the path for targets):

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V110\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(44,5): error MSB8020: The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found. To build using the v120 build tools, either click the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then select "Update VC++ Projects...". Install v120 to build using the v120 build tools.

I went to the path c:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\ and found there two subfolders: V110 and V120.

To correct the path used for targets I had to set environment variable like this:

set VCTargetsPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V120

Then the package got installed.

For reference, the versions:
VS 2013 Premium
Python 2.7.8
C:\Windows\system32>npm version { http_parser: '1.0', node: '0.10.29', v8: '3.14.5.9', ares: '1.9.0-DEV', uv: '0.10.27', zlib: '1.2.3', modules: '11', openssl: '1.0.1h', npm: '1.4.14' }