"The headers or library files could not be found for zlib, a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source"

Question

I am trying to run a Python program with pyautogui but there's a problem because it is telling me that Pillow is not installed. I tried to install it or upgrade it with commands such as

pip install Pillow --upgrade

but nothing worked.

On the documentation they say that Pillow doesn't coexist with PIL so we need to uninstall it but I can't because it says that it is not installed.

The error is:

The headers or library files could not be found for zlib,
      a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source.

and also

Collecting Pillow
  Using cached Pillow-9.2.0.tar.gz (50.0 MB)
  Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: Pillow
  Building wheel for Pillow (setup.py) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error

  × python setup.py bdist_wheel did not run successfully.

The error is not exactly about that Pillow is missing, but about the dependencies of `zlib` (*The headers or library files could not be found for zlib*), which seems to be one of Pillow's dependencies. You need to be able to install zlib first, to install Pillow. — Gino Mempin, Sep 04 '22 at 10:44

vpseg · Answer 1 · 2022-09-19T21:24:28.930

6

You need zlib-dev. This installs the headers that you need to compile parts of Pillow.

You will likely come across the same message for jpeg; for this, you need the libjpeg-turbo-dev package.

edited Sep 19 '22 at 21:24

answered Sep 19 '22 at 21:20

vpseg

71
5

Good point, but I am not sure which distribution and version you are referring to. For instance, Debian wheezy seems to have different packages. – Wtower Sep 29 '22 at 11:46
1

@Wtower Indeed. These are the package names for much of the debian family. Usually, RPM distros use `-devel` instead of `-dev`. Click the links in my answer; pkgs.org shows you the package name across over 50 different distros, which is why I only put in the names for Debian. – vpseg Sep 30 '22 at 15:15
Thanks for clarifying that @vpseg. I hadn’t properly noticed the links. – Wtower Sep 30 '22 at 20:24

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 01 '23 at 19:57

1

I was facing the same issue on my mac. For me, after running the following commands, it worked:

brew install zlib
brew install jpeg
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/zlib/include"

answered Apr 01 '23 at 19:57

Soumendra

1,518
3
27
54

1

My homebrew used a different folder. I needed export `LDFLAGS="-L/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/lib"` and export `CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/include"`. The relevant folder can be found using `brew --prefix zlib` – Dominik Peters Aug 23 '23 at 13:22

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 04 '22 at 10:33

-2

if you are linux user you can do this

pip install pillow

or

sudo apt install python3-pil

answered Sep 04 '22 at 10:33

Said Gourida

26
5

Hello, thank you for your answer, sadly I am on windows and the pip install pillow doesn't work and give me this error... could it be because of my python version ? – Kyuujin Sep 04 '22 at 10:42
no its not about your python version, what about pip ? did you installed it, and work fine? – Said Gourida Sep 04 '22 at 10:49
whiche version of python your are using ? 2 or 3 – Said Gourida Sep 04 '22 at 10:51
I am using python Python 3.9.13 and the pip version is the most recent – Kyuujin Sep 04 '22 at 10:58
try this pip install wheel – Said Gourida Sep 04 '22 at 11:04
it is already installed... – Kyuujin Sep 04 '22 at 11:26

"The headers or library files could not be found for zlib, a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source"

3 Answers3