Installing vips for python on Windows

Question

I've downloaded VIPS from from http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk and I have extracted the ZIP file on my machine and added the \bin directory to my PATH.

I am trying to import the vipsCC library into Python using the command:

from vipsCC import VImage

but I keep getting the error:

'No module named vipsCC'

How do I import a module into Python on Windows?

What I've done:

I've downloaded the VIPS package from http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/supported/current/win32/, extracted it to my windows machine, added the bin directory to the windows path. I then tried to import the vipsCC package into python using the statement "from vipsCC import *" but I get the error that it cannot find the vipsCC module.

I've also (as a hack) copied the DLLs from the vips package into the python DLLs directory, but still no luck.

VIPS is running fine from my command prompt, I just don't know how to import into Python.

Please help!

Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to set PYTHONPATH. This question was answered on the libvips issue tracker:

https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/issues/92

Answer 2

Just setting the PYTHONPATH didn't solve the problem. LIBVIPS is not supported on Windows and you need a few DLLs that are linked that are not included with LIBVIPS. I actually figured out the issue and posted the answer to the libvips issue tracker but forgot to update this question. A excerpt of that answer is posted below:

...

The package I found that contained VIPSCC is called PyGTK and it can be downloaded from http://opensourcepack.blogspot.com/2011/01/conservative-all-in-one-pygtk-installer.html.

I put the VIPSCC folder in the PYTHONHOME\lib\site-packages folder. Then I used a tool called Dependency Walker to find all the linked DLLs that where missing. Thankfully, they were all located in that PyGTK package, and I put them all in my PYTHONPATH. That was the cause of my error.

....

I hope this helps someone else....