How to build & install hcluster?

Question

I download hcluster from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/hcluster , then unzip to a folder , then type \"python setup.py install\" . It seems OK for it shows:

Answer 1

You are on windows, and are encountering a bug in distutils that prevents you from seeing the actual problem ):

set DISTUTILS_DEBUG=1
python setup.py ....

I suspect you will have something related to Visual Studio not installed. If you are using python 2.7, you need to install VS 2008, and then rerun the setup.py On python 3.x, you need a more recent version (but I am not sure whether it is 2010 or 2012 for the latest).

Another, simpler solution is to install mingw, and do::

python setup.py build_ext -c mingw32

An even simpler solution would be to check whether the feature you need are not in scipy.cluster, which has a binary installer for windows. Damian Eads (the writer of hcluster), contributed quite a bit to that module, and there is significant overlap.