Bazel build fails when generating OpenVINO Test Drive Windows bindings (MSVC toolchain / DLL errors) [closed]

3 weeks ago 27
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### Description

I am trying to contribute to the **OpenVINO Test Drive** repository (https://github.com/openvinotoolkit/openvino_testdrive) and set it up locally.

I followed the documentation — installed Visual Studio Build Tools, OpenVINO, MSYS/Bazelisk, OpenCV, and all required environment variables — but I’m stuck at the bindings build step.

During:

`bazelisk build -c opt :windows_bindings --action_env PYTHON_BIN_PATH="C://Users//anura//AppData//Local//Programs//Python//Python313//python.exe"`

I keep encountering errors related to the Visual C++ toolchain and missing DLLs (e.g., OpenCV DLL versions).

### Steps to reproduce

1. Installed dependencies as per README

2. Set environment variables (`BAZEL_VS`, `BAZEL_VC`, `BAZEL_VC_FULL_VERSION`, `BAZEL_WINSDK_FULL_VERSION`)

3. Installed OpenCV (opencv_world4130.dll), but Bazel expected opencv_world490.dll

4. Installed OpenCV 4.9.0

5. Ran Bazel build in the correct workspace

6. Used Developer Command Prompt

### Errors encountered

*(Attach screenshots or paste the relevant log snippets here)*

- Bazel couldn’t find MSVC tools early on

- After setting Windows SDK, it now fails while compiling protobuf

- DLL mismatch issues for OpenCV Error image My environment variables

### Environment

- Windows 10/11

- Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 (MSVC v14.50.35717)

- OpenVINO Runtime 2025.3.0

- MSYS2 installed

- Bazelisk latest

### What I’ve tried

- Reinstalled C++ workloads

- Set environment variables like `BAZEL_WINSDK_FULL_VERSION`

- Verified paths for cl.exe/link.exe

- Cleaned Bazel cache with `bazelisk clean --expunge`

### Request

Any guidance on how to successfully generate the bindings on Windows with Bazel would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

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