How to use Python's “easy_install” on Windows … it's not so easy

Question

After installing Python 2.7 on Windows XP, then manually setting the %PATH% to python.exe (why won\'t the python installer do this?), then installi

Answer 1

For one thing, it says you already have that module installed. If you need to upgrade it, you should do something like this:

easy_install -U packageName

Of course, easy_install doesn't work very well if the package has some C headers that need to be compiled and you don't have the right version of Visual Studio installed. You might try using pip or distribute instead of easy_install and see if they work better.