pip should translate the most common error messages into plain english

[glyph]

As described in #942, the most common problem new users have with pip is that they don't have a C compiler installed. The messages telling them this are platform-specific and unhelpful.

I realize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution here, because setup.py can get up to arbitrary nastiness, but if pip could at least translate the most common errors I am confident that its hit rate would be more like 99%/1% than 80%/20%.

So, if you can't find vcvarsall.bat, or if you see the text from xcode indicating that the EULA hasn't been agreed to yet, or cc is not found, pip should detect the platform and print a helpful message like "please run xcode-select --install" or "download a free version of visual studio here" or "apt-get install build-essential python-dev".

[tiran]

Missing header files is also a common problem. The actual error message is usually hidden in the middle of a lot of text.

[pradyunsg]

As I understand, post PEP 517, printing nice error messages about built tools would be a responsibility of the backend?

I do think that this is something setuptools should print a nice message for as on today.

[chrahunt]

As a user, I sympathize with getting a wall of error text and having to understand it.

I also recognize that we have a hard enough time giving plain english messages for our own internally-originating errors. IMO this would be best put on setuptools/build backends, which will have much finer-grained context to translate errors into something meaningful, whereas pip would just have the plain text. Further, we're already going in the direction of giving build backends control of output as opposed to pip intercepting and interpreting it.

[chrahunt]

I'll mark this "awaiting response" (we should probably have a better label for this). If anyone has contention with this being closed based on the above points, please mention it!

[no-response]

This issue has been automatically closed because there has been no response to our request for more information from the original author. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don't have enough information to take action. Please reach out if you have or find the answers we need so that we can investigate further.