Environment

• pip version: 20.2.1
• Python version: 3.8.3
• OS: Windows 10 (fully patched, on latest release)

Description

When installing a module that needs Microsoft's Visual C++ Build Tools, and these tools are not present, this message is displayed:
error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Get it with "Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools": https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/

This message is erroneous for a few reasons:

• There is no such product at https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/. I think https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/ is the correct URL.
• Version 14 probably not required. It may be a minimum requirement, not absolute. That should be validated before updating the language.
• People who already have Visual Studio installed probably should modify their installation instead of downloading build tools. The warning message doesn't say that. If you install build tools along with Visual Studio, you may run into issues.

In my case, I no longer got this error after adding C++ support to my Visual Studio 2017 installation per the link above. That validates that:

1. the build tools can be installed as a component of Visual Studio instead of separately
2. version 14 is not strictly required (Visual Studio 2017 = version 15.9.25)

Expected behavior

Error message wording should be accurate and not encourage undesirable choices.

How to Reproduce

Install a package that needs to be compiled with C++. For example: python -m pip install wordcloud

Output

The output ends with this:

error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Get it with "Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools": https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/