Under Windows 7, with Python 3.4.1 |Anaconda 2.0.1 (64-bit), calling the function cygwinccompiler.is_cygwingcc of the distutils package leads to a FileNotFoundError.

I solved the problem for me by adding the argument shell=True in l. 404 of cygwinccompiler.py:

out_string = check_output(['gcc', '-dumpmachine'], shell=True)

The issue is that that the Anaconda gcc on Windows is a bat file, so it can't find it. Another fix would be to use find_executable. This is because Anaconda has patched find_executalbe (which it also would be good to get backported)

diff --git Lib/distutils/spawn.py Lib/distutils/spawn.py
index b1c5a44..4703f00 100644
--- Lib/distutils/spawn.py
+++ Lib/distutils/spawn.py
@@ -156,17 +156,16 @@ def find_executable(executable, path=None):
         path = os.environ['PATH']

     paths = path.split(os.pathsep)
-    base, ext = os.path.splitext(executable)
-
-    if (sys.platform == 'win32') and (ext != '.exe'):
-        executable = executable + '.exe'
-
-    if not os.path.isfile(executable):
-        for p in paths:
-            f = os.path.join(p, executable)
-            if os.path.isfile(f):
-                # the file exists, we have a shot at spawn working
-                return f
-        return None
-    else:
-        return executable
+
+    for ext in '.exe', '.bat', '':
+        newexe = executable + ext
+
+        if os.path.isfile(newexe):
+            return newexe
+        else:
+            for p in paths:
+                f = os.path.join(p, newexe)
+                if os.path.isfile(f):
+                    # the file exists, we have a shot at spawn working
+                    return f
+    return None

Distutils is now deprecated (see PEP 632) and all tagged issues are being closed. From now until removal, only release blocking issues will be considered for distutils.

If this issue does not relate to distutils, please remove the component and reopen it. If you believe it still requires a fix, most likely the issue should be re-reported at https://github.com/pypa/setuptools

Is find_executable() going to be extracted from distutils to somewhere else? It's one of those functions that is useful outside of packaging, and indeed, I've seen it imported in quite a few codes that aren't related to packaging. If so, the patch I mentioned could still be relevant for it (if it hasn't been fixed already).

shutil.which is the supported replacement for that function.