OSError: no library called "cairo-2" was found on Windows

[cporrasn]

I have this problem:

OSError: no library called "cairo-2" was found
no library called "cairo" was found
no library called "libcairo-2" was found
cannot load library 'libcairo.so.2': error 0x7e
cannot load library 'libcairo.2.dylib': error 0x7e
cannot load library 'libcairo-2.dll': error 0x7e

I use windows, with a python 3.8.

Installing gtk3 from here: https://github.com/tschoonj/GTK-for-Windows-Runtime-Environment-Installer/releases is enough to solve the problem?

[liZe]

Installing gtk3 from here: https://github.com/tschoonj/GTK-for-Windows-Runtime-Environment-Installer/releases is enough to solve the problem?

Yes, installing with default options and rebooting should be enough.

[sildeag]

I previously posted a solution that worked for me on Windows 11. It is closed as far as I am concerned but apparently a person with greater expertise could apply the same fix to the CairoSVG package and completely fix the issue.

When used in Python3.10 on Windows 11, it is not enough to add the GTK3-Runtime Win64 to the path as the dll still does not load correctly. Adding this solves the issue:
gtkbin = r'C:\Program Files\GTK3-Runtime Win64\bin'
add_dll_dir = getattr(os, 'add_dll_directory', None)
if callable(add_dll_dir):
add_dll_dir(gtkbin)
else:
os.environ['PATH'] = os.pathsep.join((gtkbin, os.environ['PATH']))
import cairosvg

[liZe]

@farnking Hi!

If you use a recent version of Python and cairocffi, you can set the CAIROCFFI_DLL_DIRECTORIES environment variable to the path where you installed Cairo (this is C:\Program Files\GTK3-Runtime Win64\bin with the GTK3 installer, for example).

[farnking]

I searched various posts for two days for a solution for Windows. Finally this works. But somehow I restarted the windows like twice before it worked. So initially I thought this another useless post. But it is not.

[farnking]

I wonder why no one wants to help us windows app developers with a packaged solution?

[liZe]

I wonder why no one wants to help us windows app developers with a packaged solution?

Open source developers probably prefer to work on and for open source platforms, that’s why, I guess 😄.

If you’re interested in packaging CairoSVG for Windows, maybe you can ask some projects if they would be interested in your help. MSYS2 could be interested in a CairoSVG package, for example.

And if you’d prefer a cairosvg.exe file, you could try to use Pyinstaller: that’s what we do for WeasyPrint for example.

[liZe]

(Closing, as using CAIROCFFI_DLL_DIRECTORIES works with recent versions of Python and CairoCFFI. Please open another issue if you get the same error.)