Pillow repeatedly failed to install in virtualenv: _imaging.o: No such file or directory on Ubuntu

Question

I have installed Pillow in Ubuntu - 14.0.0 without any virtualenv. But when I try to install it again in my virtualenv it fails with the following error.

   Reading https://pypi.python.org/simple/Pillow/
   Best match: Pillow 3.0.0
   Downloading https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/P/Pillow/Pillow-
        i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/_imaging.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/decode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/encode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/map.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/display.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/ZipDecode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/ZipEncode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/TiffDecode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/Incremental.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.o: No such file or directory
    i686-linux-gnu-gcc: error: build/temp.linux-i686-2.7/libImaging/Jpeg2KEncode.o: No such file or directory
    error: Setup script exited with error: command 'i686-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 1

I have tried installing python-devel but it is pf no use. Can some tell me whats wrong with this?

Edit :

I am using virtualwrapper so command for virtualenv is : mkvirtualenv env1 , and for pillow I have tried easy_install, as mentioned above, pip and direct installation from source as well. But it all fails

You should post the commands used to create the virtualenv and install pillow. — approxiblue, Oct 17 '15 at 06:31
Use `pip install -vvv` to get better error output, edit your question and add it there, with full pip command. — Mikko Ohtamaa, Oct 17 '15 at 07:11
Try this answer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/27840189/2744166 — Joe Young, Oct 17 '15 at 09:28

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '15 at 11:33

When compiling Pillow, it ignores any compile errors it encountered, and will only complain in linking phase when some object files are not found.

So, all you have to do is to increase verbosity (using pip -vvv) and see if you can spot error messages in compile phase. Having a terminal with large enough scrollback buffer will help. Otherwise, you can always redirect its output to a file.

In my case, the compile errors were caused by memory shortage. Increasing RAM fixed the problem.

Pillow repeatedly failed to install in virtualenv: _imaging.o: No such file or directory on Ubuntu

1 Answers1