Python 3 Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required

Fix Python on Windows:

error Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required

by installing Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio.

Select: Workloads → Desktop development with C++, then for Individual Components, select only:

  • Windows SDK
  • C++ x64/x86 build tools

The build tools allow using MSVC “cl.exe” C / C++ compiler from the command line.

Visual Studio changed the Build Tools from being C++ specific in late 2017. Thus newer Visual Studio versions work in place of older versions.

Windows Python needs Visual C++ libraries installed via the SDK to build code, such as via setuptools.extension.Extension or numpy.distutils.core.Extension. For example, building f2py modules in Windows with Python requires Visual C++ SDK as installed above. On Unix-like operating systems, the C++ libraries are installed with the compiler.

Python / Visual Studio build matrix