Failed to install zbar with pip on Windows

Question

I'm trying to install zbar on my Windows x64 machine:

pip install zbar

And this is what I got:

Collecting zbar
Using cached zbar-0.10.tar.bz2
Installing collected packages: zbar
Running setup.py install for zbar ... error
Complete output from command c:\python27\python.exe -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='c:\\users\\ruiyang\\appdata\\local\\temp\\pip-build-t2okcg\\zbar\\setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record c:\users\ruiyang\appdata\local\temp\pip-4pohzw-record\install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile:
running install
running build
running build_ext
building 'zbar' extension
creating build
creating build\temp.win-amd64-2.7
creating build\temp.win-amd64-2.7\Release
C:\Users\Ruiyang\AppData\Local\Programs\Common\Microsoft\Visual C++ for Python\9.0\VC\Bin\amd64\cl.exe /c /nologo /Ox /MD /W3 /GS- /DNDEBUG -IC:\Python27\include -IC:\Python27\PC /Tczbarmodule.c /Fobuild\temp.win-amd64-2.7\Release\zbarmodule.obj
zbarmodule.c
c:\users\ruiyang\appdata\local\temp\pip-build-t2okcg\zbar\zbarmodule.h(26) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'zbar.h': No such file or directory
error: command 'C:\\Users\\Ruiyang\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Common\\Microsoft\\Visual C++ for Python\\9.0\\VC\\Bin\\amd64\\cl.exe' failed with exit status 2

----------------------------------------
Command "c:\python27\python.exe -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='c:\\users\\ruiyang\\appdata\\local\\temp\\pip-build-t2okcg\\zbar\\setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record c:\users\ruiyang\appdata\local\temp\pip-4pohzw-record\install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile" failed with error code 1 in c:\users\ruiyang\appdata\local\temp\pip-build-t2okcg\zbar\

Anyone knows how to fix this problem?

Answer 1

You are trying to install zbar package with pip. When doing so, pip downloads the source and tries to compile the C/C++ source code of this project.

To do such a thing, you need a C/C++ compiler and having all dependencies. It may be complicated to have pip compiles this package.

The other solution is to download a binary wheel that embeds all binaries. zbar developers propose to download a binary wheel from their GitHub webpage

You can download this binary wheel, that targets a Windows Python 2.7 64 bit installation.

All you have to do is:

• open a Windows cli with Windows+R and by running inside cmd
• go to the directory where you have downloaded the whl file, with cd instructions
• run pip install zbar-0.10-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl

For example, the command can be

pip install zbar-0.10-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl

If you have several Python installations, make sure to use the correct pip program.

You can do it for any package with some code that has to be compiled