Introduction

Building Python extensions on Windows is not as simple as on other platforms. In order to build extensions, you will need the following:

• A C compiler. Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 is bundled with Python 3.4, but will need to be installed separately for previous versions of Python. For Python 2.7, you can use Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7
• The Windows SDK. This is required in order to build extensions that use certain Windows API functions.
• The pycrypto library. Some extensions use this library to provide encryption functionality.

Building extensions on Windows can be a bit of a challenge, but with the right tools it can be done easily.

What is Pycrypto?

Pycrypto is a Python library that provides cryptographic functionality. It is widely used in applications such as web development, data security, and encryption.

Why did the build fail?

Building wheels for collected packages: pycrypto
Running setup.py bdist_wheel for pycrypto … error
Complete output from command /usr/bin/python3 -u -c “import setuptools, tokenize;file=’/tmp/pip-build-Ms8mmv/pycrypto/setup.py’;f=getattr(tokenize, ‘open’, open)(file);code=f.read().replace(‘\r\n’, ‘\n’);f.close();exec(compile(code, file, ‘exec’))” bdist_wheel -d /tmp/tmpnv1w94hrpip-wheel- –python-tag cp35:
usage: -c [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] …]
or: -c –help [cmd1 cmd2 …]
or: -c –help-commands
or: -c cmd –help

error: invalid command ‘bdist_wheel’

---

Failed building wheel for pycrypto
Failed to build pycrypto

Installing collected packages: pycrypto, paramiko
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_internal/basecommand.py”, line 228, in main
status = self.run(options, args)
File “/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_internal/commands/install.py”, line 291, in run idealist=self._use_idealisticy installs?json={}’.format(inflector), needssudo=self._needssudo)

How to fix the build error?

If you’re seeing the error “failed building wheel for pycrypto” when you try to install the cryptography package, you can fix it by updating your setuptools version:

pip install -U setuptools

Conclusion

Pycrypto is a popular Python library that allows you to encrypt and decrypt data. However, it can be difficult to install pycrypto on Windows. The most common problem is that pycrypto fails to build a wheel, which is required for installation.

There are a few ways to work around this issue. One is to download a pre-built wheel from another source and then install it using pip. Another is to use a different library that does not have this issue, such as pyOpenSSL. Finally, you can also try building pycrypto from source, although this can be tricky.