Installing a Python module in Windows

Question

I'm trying to install a Python module on my Windows computer. I installed the development version of the NetBeans IDE to use as my Python editor, and it seems that they install Jython 2.5 under their own program folder, and force you to use that installation for development.

I've been trying to install the PyWhois module for half an hour now, and I'm getting pretty infuriated with the kludginess of developing Python on Windows with Netbeans.

Does anyone know how to install modules with this setup? Should I destroy my dev environment and use something else that would be less rage-inducing?

Answer 1

Jython is Python for Java - are you sure this is what you want? I have answered this for "normal" Python for Windows, I assume this is what you are after.

To use Python under Windows, you need to install the Windows binary installer, which you can download from the Python download page. Make sure you choose the binary installer.

Next, you will need to install setuptools, which you can get from the python package index (pypi).

Once you have installed both, you have Python available under Windows. You should be able to open a command prompt and type "python" to get the python prompt, it should look like this:

Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Nov 27 2010, 18:30:46) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Then, to install PyWhois, open a command prompt and type:

C:\>easy_install pywhois

You'll see output like this:

Searching for pywhois
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/pywhois/
Best match: pywhois 0.1
Downloading http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pywhois/pywhois-0.1.tar.gz#
md5=b888dcd990574b7b284d9a9f4b300776
Processing pywhois-0.1.tar.gz
Running pywhois-0.1\setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir c:\docume~1\40843\locals~1\
temp\easy_install-hugnul\pywhois-0.1\egg-dist-tmp-aarhii
Adding pywhois 0.1 to easy-install.pth file
Installing pywhois-script.py script to C:\Python27\Scripts
Installing pywhois.exe script to C:\Python27\Scripts
Installing pywhois.exe.manifest script to C:\Python27\Scripts

Installed c:\python27\lib\site-packages\pywhois-0.1-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for pywhois
Finished processing dependencies for pywhois

To confirm it is installed, you should be able to import it from Python:

Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Nov 27 2010, 18:30:46) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pywhois
>>>

Netbeans 7.0 has removed Python support (see http://wiki.netbeans.org/Python70Roadmap) for more information.

This http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments wiki entry lists some other IDEs you can try.