Windows fresh build fails

[rodrigorhas]

As the title says, for about the last 3 hours (yup, this time) i was trying to do a simple npm install and i cannot get it to work due to:

• MSBuild Cpp errors (file is missing, may be a bug from executable)
• Python is required (v2.7 but not up to v3) to build robotjs
• and other weird issues related to the items above

I can't put the error messages here because i already solved some of them and i lost the error messages...

So, i thing all the issues i've got was related only to robotjs build.
Is there a way to skip this build process or even make it easier?

UPDATE 1

i've just found some errors reported by the npm install

• MSBUILD : error MSB4132: The tools version "2.0" is unrecognized. Available tools versions are "4.0"
  • then i tried to npm install --global --production windows-build-tools described here (MSBUILD : error MSB4132: The tools version "2.0" is unrecognized. Available tools versions are "4.0". chjj/pty.js#60)
• C:\wamp64\www\colorpicker\node_modules\robotjs\build\robotjs.vcxproj(20,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Mic
  rosoft.Cpp.Default.props" was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the fil
  e exists on disk.
• gyp ERR! stack import sys; print "%s.%s.%s" % sys.version_info[:3]; gyp ERR! stack ^ gyp ERR! stack SyntaxError: invalid syntax
  • this throws when i try to use python 3+ version

[Toinane]

Hey! Thanks for your issue!
yeah I'll need to make a documentation on how to compile colorpicker on local..

The delicate part is related to native module like robotjs, win-mouse and osx-mouse.
For windows, you have to :

• install windows-build-tools npm package (npm install --global --production windows-build-tools from an elevated PowerShell or CMD.exe)
• install node-gyp npm install -g node-gyp

Make sure you use a newer version of NodeJS like NodeJS 8 or NodeJS 10. The installation is not expected to work with a previous version like NodeJS 6

when you run npm install, it should just install all dependencies, you'll need to run npm run rebuild, this command will rebuild all native modules for the version of Electron Colorpicker use.

If it doesn't work again, I don't know if it can help but I've installed Visual Studio with all its options proposed during installation on my Windows

[rodrigorhas]

Damn. This is so annoying. I'll give it a try later and I'll report back if your "recipe" is right haha 😀

[Toinane]

Yeah sorry 😞It's not so easy to add native module into Electron project.. And I need it to make picker work.

[Toinane]

For this issue, I'll update the readme with more informations. Since I'll change the picker feature in next update, this will be more easier to build for development 👍