Installing scss-lint with npm without Python - npm

Question

I'm trying to get gulp-scss-lint to work on my machine, but having trouble doing so.
Context
I have a feeling specific versions and environment settings may be important to my issue, so let me list my specific context:
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
NPM 2.14.7
Node 4.2.2
Gulp 3.9.0 installed -g
Running from Powershell 4.0
Repro
Here's a repro of my problem:
mkdir gulpscsslint and cd gulpscsslint
npm init with all default answers
npm install gulp --save-dev
npm install gulp-scss-lint --save-dev
new-item -itemtype file gulpfile.js and enter:
var gulp = require('gulp'), lint = require('gulp-scss-lint');
gulp.task('default', [], function() {
return gulp.src('*.scss').pipe(lint());
});
new-item -itemtype file styles.scss
gulp
Result:
[08:48:50] Using gulpfile ~\experiments\gulpscsslint\gulpfile.js
[08:48:50] Starting 'default'...
[08:48:50] 'default' errored after 32 ms
[08:48:50] Error in plugin 'gulp-scss-lint'
Message:
Error code 1
Error: Command failed: C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /s /c "scss-lint 'styles.scss' --format=JSON"
'scss-lint' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Expected result was obviously actual output from the linter.
So then I continued:
npm install scss-lint --save-dev
But it fails with failNoPython, with this snippet from the output:
Can not download file from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sass/node-sass-binaries/v2.1.1/win32-x64-node-4.2/binding.node
gyp ERR! configure error
gyp ERR! stack Error: Can't find Python executable "python", you can set the PYTHON env variable
Question
Is it really a hard requirement to have Python to install this Node package? Or can it somehow be installed without installing Python?
As a footnote, now that I've fully written this question I realize this might be more something of a Github issue, but if so I might need some help (learning how to) find(ing) out what package or tool is giving me trouble (gulp-scss-lint? scss-lint? npm? node-sass or some other underlying package?).

Answer 1

You can manually install the package by cloning or downloading it directly from it's github repository and placing it into your targeted location.
Note:
node-gyp is a cross-platform command-line tool written in Node.js for compiling native addon modules for Node.js. Link
This package requires Python to work. Hundreds of packages, including npm and npminstall, rely on node-gyp to compile. On windows, a person can install the package windows-build-tools, which includes python, to use node-gyp.