How to enable Python support in gVim on Windows?

I had the same issue, but on Windows 7, and a restart didn't fix it.

I already had gVim 7.3 installed. At the time of writing the current Python version was 3.3, so I installed that. But :has ("python") and :has ("python3") still returned 0.

After much trial and error, I determined that:

• If gVim is 32-bit, and it usually is even on 64-bit Windows (you can confirm using the :version command), then you need the 32-bit python installation as well
• No restart of Windows 7 is required
• The version of python needs to match the version that gVim is compiled for as it looks for a specific DLL name. You can work this out from the :version command in gVim, which gives something like:

Compilation: cl -c /W3 /nologo -I. -Iproto -DHAVE_PATHDEF -DWIN32
-DFEAT_CSCOPE -DFEAT_ NETBEANS_INTG -DFEAT_XPM_W32 -DWINVER=0x0400 -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0400 /Fo.\ObjGOLYHTR/ / Ox /GL -DNDEBUG /Zl /MT -DFEAT_OLE -DFEAT_MBYTE_IME -DDYNAMIC_IME -DFEAT_GUI_W32 -DDYNAMI C_ICONV -DDYNAMIC_GETTEXT -DFEAT_TCL -DDYNAMIC_TCL -DDYNAMIC_TCL_DLL=\"tcl83.dll\" -DDYNAM IC_TCL_VER=\"8.3\" -DFEAT_PYTHON -DDYNAMIC_PYTHON -DDYNAMIC_PYTHON_DLL=\"python27.dll\" -D FEAT_PYTHON3 -DDYNAMIC_PYTHON3 -DDYNAMIC_PYTHON3_DLL=\"python31.dll\" -DFEAT_PERL -DDYNAMI C_PERL -DDYNAMIC_PERL_DLL=\"perl512.dll\" -DFEAT_RUBY -DDYNAMIC_RUBY -DDYNAMIC_RUBY_VER=19 1 -DDYNAMIC_RUBY_DLL=\"msvcrt-ruby191.dll\" -DFEAT_BIG /Fd.\ObjGOLYHTR/ /Zi

So the above told me that I don't actually want python 3.3, I need 3.1 (or 2.7). After installing python 3.1, :has ("python") still returns 0, but :has ("python3") now returns 1. That should mean that python based scripts will now work!

I imagine future versions of gVim may be compiled against other versions of python, but using this method should let you work out which version is required.

I encountered this problem on Windows 7 64-bit. I realized I was using 64-bit Python 2.7.3 and 32-bit vim 7.3-46. I reinstalled both as 32-bit versions and then restarted the computer. Now it works.

If you have installed Python via one of the Windows installers it is probably compiled with Python 2.7 support. You can verify this by running:

:version

It will spit out all the options Vim was compiled with. Yours should say something like

+python/dyn +python3\dyn

This means you have support for python 2.7 and 3.x. If you already have 2.5 it won't work. You will need to upgrade to either 2.7 or 3.x.

Usually, python support is built in the official gvim distribution.

You will need to install python though: Python Downloads

to check if vim supports python:

:echo has("python")