Ubuntu running `pip install` gives error 'The following required packages can not be built: * freetype'

Question

When performing pip install -r requirements.txt, I get the following error during the stage where it is installing matplotlib:

REQUIRED DEPENDENCIES AND EXTENSIONS
                 numpy: yes [not found. pip may install it below.]
              dateutil: yes [dateutil was not found. It is required for date
                        axis support. pip/easy_install may attempt to
                        install it after matplotlib.]
               tornado: yes [tornado was not found. It is required for the
                        WebAgg backend. pip/easy_install may attempt to
                        install it after matplotlib.]
             pyparsing: yes [pyparsing was not found. It is required for
                        mathtext support. pip/easy_install may attempt to
                        install it after matplotlib.]
                 pycxx: yes [Couldn't import.  Using local copy.]
                libagg: yes [pkg-config information for 'libagg' could not
                        be found. Using local copy.]
              freetype: no  [pkg-config information for 'freetype2' could
                        not be found.]

...

The following required packages can not be built:

                    * freetype

Shouldn't pip install -r requirements.txt also install freetype? How should freetype be installed in Ubuntu 12.04 so it works with matplotlib?

score 229 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 24 '17 at 18:59

229

No. pip will not install system-level dependencies. This means pip will not install RPM(s) (Redhat based systems) or DEB(s) (Debian based systems).

To install system dependencies you will need to use one of the following methods depending on your system.

Ubuntu/Debian:

apt-get install libfreetype6-dev

To search for packages on Ubuntu/Debian based systems:

apt-cache search <string>

e.g:

apt-cache search freetype | grep dev

Redhat/CentOS/Fedora:

yum -y install freetype-devel

To search for packages on Redhat/CentOS/Fedora based systems:

yum search <string>

e.g:

yum search freetype | grep devel

Mac OS X: (via Homebrew)

brew install freetype

To search for packages on Mac OS X based systems:

brew search <string>

e.g:

brew search freetype

edited Jan 24 '17 at 18:59

Julien Marrec

11,605
4
46
63

answered Dec 12 '13 at 01:38

James Mills

18,669
3
49
62

Sorry it's called ``freetype2`` these days. Updated. – James Mills Dec 12 '13 at 02:05
`apt-get install freetype2-devel` gives the same error too... Could it be `apt-get install freetype*`? That seems to want to install many other packages – Athena Wisdom Dec 12 '13 at 02:47
That will probably work too :) Sorry I believe it's called ``libfreetype2-devel``. I'll updates my answer again :/ – James Mills Dec 12 '13 at 02:52
2

I think the `-devel` convention is for RPM and the `-dev` convention is for DEB. Try `apt-cache search '^libfreetype.*-dev$'` which gives `libfreetype6-dev`. – Dietrich Epp Dec 12 '13 at 03:09
@DietrichEpp Thanks :) Bit hard to test without access to Debian/Ubuntu machines :/ Our work only uses RHEL/CentOS :) – James Mills Dec 12 '13 at 03:11
You can always use http://packages.ubuntu.com if you don't have access to a computer running Ubuntu. – Dietrich Epp Dec 12 '13 at 03:15
@DietrichEpp Yeah I did but had trouble finding the right package because of the **dev** vs. **devel** convention -- Got myself confused :) – James Mills Dec 12 '13 at 03:17
9

fwiw, `brew install freetype` helped me on OSX – Nate Feb 19 '14 at 22:17
Mac OS X Users: `brew install pkg-config` will help `pip` find `freetype` – lababidi Mar 29 '16 at 05:31
Ubuntu/Debian users also need the package in @Sudipta Basak's answer – Hack-R May 30 '17 at 20:28

Sudipta Basak · Answer 2 · 2014-07-13T13:35:34.227

147

I had to install libxft-dev in order to enable matplotlib on ubuntu server 14.04.

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev libxft-dev

And then I could use

sudo easy_install matplotlib

edited Jul 13 '14 at 13:35

answered Jun 28 '14 at 10:21

Sudipta Basak

3,089
2
18
14

10

On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS I also needed to install libxft-dev. Thanks for this extra info – toom Jul 01 '14 at 21:10
3

Why not directly use sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib as recommended here: http://matplotlib.org/users/installing.html – Timo Nov 08 '14 at 21:16
3

I already had libfreetype6-dev installed. This helped for me on ubuntu 14.10, thanks! – wim Nov 24 '14 at 00:17
4

the libxft-dev thing is what did it for me! thanks! – TerminalDilettante Feb 16 '15 at 18:55
11

Apparently, the real dependency here is `pkg-config`, which `libxft-dev` also installs as a dependency. So, the right answer would be to run `apt-get install libfreetype6-dev pkg-config` – Carles Sala Sep 14 '15 at 14:10
on WSL2 I also had to install `libxft-dev` – xorinzor Apr 26 '21 at 18:17

score 30 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 05 '15 at 05:06

30

A workaround is to do sudo apt-get install pkg-config which I found in this github issue.

answered Jan 05 '15 at 05:06

notconfusing

2,556
3
22
26

3

installing ``pkg-config`` was the missing unintuitive step for me as well, this when installing ``matplotlib`` in a docker container with ``ubuntu:14.04`` as base-image. – SlimJim Mar 01 '15 at 16:19
This also fixed it for me as well on a virtualbox VM. Looks like `pkg-config` is what is needed for virtual machine installations. – Alma Jun 24 '16 at 00:30

score 7 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 16 '15 at 21:43

7

None of the existing answers worked for me to upgrade matplotlib on Ubuntu. This is what ultimately work for me:

$ sudo apt-get install build-dep python-matplotlib
$ pip install matplotlib --upgrade

edited Jun 16 '15 at 21:43

James Mills

18,669
3
49
62

answered Feb 24 '15 at 23:39

PaulMest

12,925
7
53
50

score 7 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 18 '16 at 21:15

7

This command will download all dependencies.

For python 2.x

sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib

For python 3.x

sudo apt-get install python3-matplotlib

After installing, you can try

(sudo) pip install matplotlib

edited Aug 18 '16 at 21:15

thang

3,466
1
19
31

answered Jan 21 '16 at 18:07

Miae Kim

1,713
19
21

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 16 '16 at 16:09

4

On Ubuntu, it worked after I installed blt-dev package.

$sudo apt-get install blt-dev
$pip install matplotlib

answered Mar 16 '16 at 16:09

Caleb Kiage

1,422
12
17

blt-dev needs `apt-get install libfreetype6-dev` to run so it is automaticly installed with blt-dev. – Tristan Jun 24 '16 at 07:15

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 28 '15 at 17:19

1

I'm using Mint an none of this answers worked for me, I needed to:

sudo apt-get install build-essential g++

answered Dec 28 '15 at 17:19

Shapi

5,493
4
28
39

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 31 '16 at 19:59

1

I had the same issue with Python 3.6 on Windows, but then I switched to Python 3.5.2 and everything works fine.

answered Dec 31 '16 at 19:59

klimenkov

347
2
8

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 19:45

This command sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev failed for me on ubuntu 16.04,
The following packages have unmet dependencies: libfreetype6-dev : Depends: libfreetype6 (= 2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2) but 2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2.3 is to be installed

So I downloaded installed freetype from the source, credit to this guide

$ tar -xvjf freetype-x.y.tar.bz2  # extract the downloaded version file
$ cd freetype-x.y/ 
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

switched to virtualenv and pip install matplotlib and everything is working.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 08 '22 at 11:17

I followed James Mills' answer to install freetype. But still, although freetype was installed, the program was still failing. I believe this was because the program was not able to find the path of freetype. The following command solved the issue.

sudo apt-get install pkg-config

I found this solution on https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/3029/

Ubuntu running `pip install` gives error 'The following required packages can not be built: * freetype'

10 Answers10

Linked