Why do I get an error when installing Pillow 3.0.0 on Ubuntu?

Question

I recently failed trying to install Pillow 3.0.0 on my Ubuntu 14.04.

No matter what I do (download and try to sudo python setup.py install or sudo -H pip install Pillow==3.0.0 --no-cache-dir) every time I get error:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-build-3waMkf/Pillow/setup.py", line 767, in <module>
        zip_safe=not debug_build(),
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/core.py", line 151, in setup
        dist.run_commands()
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 953, in run_commands
        self.run_command(cmd)
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 972, in run_command
        cmd_obj.run()
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools/command/install.py", line 61, in run
        return orig.install.run(self)
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/command/install.py", line 601, in run
        self.run_command('build')
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/cmd.py", line 326, in run_command
        self.distribution.run_command(command)
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 972, in run_command
        cmd_obj.run()
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/command/build.py", line 128, in run
        self.run_command(cmd_name)
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/cmd.py", line 326, in run_command
        self.distribution.run_command(command)
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 972, in run_command
        cmd_obj.run()
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 337, in run
        self.build_extensions()
      File "/tmp/pip-build-3waMkf/Pillow/setup.py", line 515, in build_extensions
        % (f, f))
    ValueError: --enable-zlib requested but zlib not found, aborting.

    ----------------------------------------
Command "/usr/bin/python -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-3waMkf/Pillow/setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-S_sHo7-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-3waMkf/Pillow

Solution

Did you install the dependencies for pillow ? You can install them by

$ sudo apt-get build-dep python-imaging
$ sudo apt-get install libjpeg8 libjpeg62-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev

Comments

[user3613919]

Thank you! That was it. You've been very helpful :)

[David Dahan]

What if I'm using a virtual env and just want to use Pillow without installing anything in my system?

[Yash Mehrotra]

The above are system wide dependencies, what pip does is, it only installs the module/library. Sometimes, libraries require to use things at system level which may not be installed by default. Whether you are using a virtualenv or installing it globally, you have to install these libraries to use Pillow.

[David Dahan]

Ok Thanks. For Mac OS X 10.9 users: brew install Homebrew/python/pillow, brew link jpeg, xcode-select --install are command which allow you then to make a pip install pillow.

[shellbye]

I just what to know where to find the dependencies instead of SO, is there any doc we should read?

[Yash Mehrotra]

@shellbye Ideally, the library should list the dependencies and installation instructions for popular operating systems in their docs. SO comes to the rescue when they don't.

[shellbye]

@YashMehrotra Now I know where to look at next time, thanks.