Improve error message for kiwisolver import error (DLL load failed) (#14316)

Jonas Camillus Jeppesen · dstansby · commit a2cb4ee267d4 · 2019-05-30T17:02:39.000+01:00
Quickfix to load MS VC++ redist DLLs before importing kiwisolver which otherwise fails with 'ImportError: DLL load failed'
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py b/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py
@@ -185,6 +185,11 @@ def compare_versions(a, b):
 
 
 def _check_versions():
+
+    # Quickfix to ensure Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable
+    # DLLs are loaded before importing kiwisolver
+    from . import ft2font
+
     for modname, minver in [
             ("cycler", "0.10"),
             ("dateutil", "2.1"),
