When building Python 3.2.3 from source on Ubuntu 12.04, the zlib module is not available.
I downloaded the official source distribution from python.org, and attempted to build and install it with the following commands.
tar xfa Python3.2.3.tar.bz2 cd Python-3.2.3 ./configure --prefix=/opt/python3.2 make sudo make install
The make command output includes the following.
Python build finished, but the necessary bits to build these modules were not found: _curses _curses_panel _dbm _gdbm _sqlite3 _ssl _tkinter bz2 readline zlib
After running make install and starting the interpreter, the zlib module cannot be imported.
I confirmed that the zlib1g-dev package is installed on my system.
I also found this similar question, which suggests adding the --with-zlib flag to the ./configure command. However, that returns an error that it is an unrecognized option and has no effect.
Answers:
Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Method 1
I had a similar problem on CentOS 6.3 and python 3.2.3
I solved it by:
Edit /Modules/Setup and uncomment the line:
zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz
change to directory /Modules/zlib:
./configure make sudo make install
then compiled my python3.2 source.
and was then able to test import zlib and it all worked fine 🙂
Method 2
I am using CentOS 6.6 and was recieving zlib errors. None of the other answers proposed here worked for me (including the fix for CentOS 6.3 of uncommenting a line in Modules/Setup). I have fixed it using the following commands.
yum groupinstall "Development tools" yum install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel readline-devel tk-devel gdbm-devel db4-devel libpcap-devel xz-devel
Then configuring and installing python as follows:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath /usr/local/lib" make && make altinstall
I can now import zlib in /usr/local/bin/python2.7 with no problems.
These instructions are slightly modified from an article found here.
Method 3
The solution is to install the Ubuntu package dpkg-dev.
sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev
The reason is explained here.
In short, recent versions of Ubuntu don’t store libz.so in the standard /usr/lib location, but rather in a platform specific location. For example, on my system is is in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu. This prevents Python’s build system from finding it.
The dpkg-dev package installs the dpkg-architecture executable, which enables Python to find the necessary libraries.
The original question was about Python 3.2.3. I also downloaded Python 2.7.3 and confirmed that the same problem exists, and this solution is applicable to it as well.
Method 4
For anyone who’s trying to use a non-system / non-standard zlib (e.g. building your own from source), make sure to pass both CPPFLAGS (not CFLAGS!) and LDFLAGS to ./configure. For example, if your zlib is in /opt/zlib:
./configure CPPFLAGS='-I/opt/zlib/include' LDFLAGS='-L/opt/zlib/lib' make sudo make install
I ended up going down the rabbit hole trying to figure out why our Python wasn’t building with zlib support and found out that the CPython setup.py does not look at CFLAGS for include dirs, only CPPFLAGS:
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/setup.py#L562
Method 5
The only solution that helped me with installing python 3.5.1 was to apt-get zlib1g-dev (and other packages such as python-setuptools and python-pip) and then rebuild python 3.5.1 from source.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-setuptools python-pip python-smbus sudo apt-get install build-essential libncursesw5-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev sudo apt-get install libssl-dev openssl cd ~ mkdir build cd build wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.5.1/Python-3.5.1.tgz tar -zxvf Python-3.5.1.tgz cd Python-3.5.1 ./configure make sudo make install
Taken from: https://github.com/MrYsLab/xideco/wiki/Installing-Python-3.5
As I undestand new build of python is made with inclusion of previously apt-getted related packages.
So when you browse the content of new Python-3.5.1/lib/site-packages there will be pip and setuptools. More importantly, they will be copied to any virtualenv you make using Python-3.5.1 AND this virtualenv will use THEM insted of system-default. This is very, very important to rememmber when installing new python version. Otherwise one might get into a black hole of errors such as:
- zlib not installed;
- “pip install …” executed from virtualenv that installs package to system-default python instead of virtualenv.
Method 6
I was having the same error while working on MAC
My MAC OS version
$ uname -v Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0: Sun Aug 17 19:50:11 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.115.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
python3.4 is used here
Issue(s)
-
zlib not available while using python3.4
$ python3.4 get-pip.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “get-pip.py”, line 20204, in
main()
File “get-pip.py”, line 152, in main
bootstrap(tmpdir=tmpdir)
File “get-pip.py”, line 82, in bootstrap
import pip
zipimport.ZipImportError: can’t decompress data; zlib not available -
Rebuilding Python fails
./configure –with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib
…
configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: –with-zlib-dir
…
Solution
-
Ensure zlib is installed .
By default it will be installed in /usr/libls /usr/lib/libz.*
If not installed,
a. download and install
i)from zlib.net site
or
ii) from a git repo like the below
git clone https://github.com/madler/zlib.git
or
iii). Use the zlib source in the python source directory
Modules/zlib
b. Install zlib
./configure --prefix=/usr/local make sudo make install
2.Edit /Module/Setup by uncommenting the line below
“#zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz ”
3.Rebuild the Python3.4 from source again
cd ${PYTHON_SRC_CODE_DIR}
./configure --prefix=${PYTHON_HOME_DIR}
make
sudo make install
4.Confirm installation
Please note gzip depends on zlib.
nbr_repeation=100
f=open("some_file.txt","at")
for line in range(nbr_repeation):
print('[{}] This file will be compressed using python zlib/gzipmodule'.format(line),file=f)
f.close()
f=open("some_file.txt","rt")
import gzip
gz=gzip.open('some_file.gz', 'wt')
for line in f : gz.write(line)
gz.close() # Like to be clean exit
f.close() # Like a clean exit
"""confirm the creation of the compressed gzip files"""
import os
print([ (file,os.stat(file)[6],"bytes") for file in os.listdir(".") if file.startswith("some")])
Method 7
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev
Even though python-dev is for python2.7 it will still bring in all the necessary dependencies.
You will then need to do:
./configure make sudo make install
To rebuild python3
Method 8
The easiest solution I found, is on python.org:
sudo apt-get build-dep python3.6
If that package is not available for your system, try reducing the minor version until you find a package that is available in your system’s package manager.
If you see something like this: E: You must put some ‘source’ URIs in your sources.list, Open Software & Updates and enable Source code.
I tried explaining details, on a blog post.
Method 9
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
is what worked for me.
Method 10
For anyone having the same error on macOS Mojave, this is the easiest solution for installing/linking the header files:
open /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg
Then just build Python again as usual (also works with pyenv builds).
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0