pip install python-igraph failed on debian image

Question

I'm just trying to create a docker image from this Dockerfile.

FROM debian:latest

USER root

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
ENV PATH /twecoll:$PATH

RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y build-essential libxml2-dev zlib1g-dev python-dev python-pip pkg-config libffi-dev libcairo-dev git
RUN pip install python-igraph
RUN pip install --upgrade cffi
RUN pip install cairocffi

RUN git clone https://github.com/jdevoo/twecoll.git
ADD .twecoll /root

WORKDIR /app
VOLUME /app

ENTRYPOINT ["twecoll"]
CMD ["-v"]

but when running RUN pip install python-igraph, an error appears like this.

Error Message:

Any idea why?

Answer 1

Try as the documentation suggests.

pip install git+https://github.com/igraph/python-igraph

or

pip install –no-binary ‘:all:’ python-igraph

Answer 2

When you're installing python-igraph from pip and it can't find a precompiled wheel for your distribution (which it mostly doesn't), pip will try to compile the igraph binaries for your image, which 1) is error-prone, 2) takes a long time, 3) is the reason you need to install so many build tools and libraries. A better approach is to install igraph from the Debian repositories with apt-get install python-igraph first, which will install all the necessary requirements including a compiled igraph.

This leaves the following Dockerfile:

FROM debian:latest

USER root

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
ENV PATH /twecoll:$PATH

RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y python-dev python-pip libffi-dev libcairo-dev git python-igraph
RUN pip install python-igraph
RUN pip install --upgrade cffi
RUN pip install cairocffi

RUN git clone https://github.com/jdevoo/twecoll.git
ADD .twecoll /root

WORKDIR /app
VOLUME /app

ENTRYPOINT ["twecoll"]
CMD ["-v"]

As you can see I'm just installing python-igraph, no more build tools! You may even be able to do something similar for cairo and ffi but I'm leaving that for you.