pip install matplotlib fails: 'cannot build package freetype; “python setup.py egg_info” failed with error code 1'

Question

I want to use matplotlib.pyplot. I can't because

altoidnerd@LEPTON:~/ $ pip install matplotlib

is failing on ubuntu 14 giving an egg_info error, and warning "cannot build package freetype"

* The following required packages can not be built:

                        * freetype

----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-8UvQcW/matplotlib

But

altoidnerd@LEPTON:~/$ dpkg -L libfreetype6
/.
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6.11.1
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/FTL.TXT.gz
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/ft2faq.html
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/TODO
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/pcf
/usr/share/doc/libfreetype6/pcf/README
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6

my debug.log is here: http://pastebin.com/rvDuYDiy

A discussion about this on github was closed last year, but I was unable to use it to solve the problem (I left a note):

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/3029

I started a reddit thread too.

Answer 1

This did the trick for me:

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev pkg-config

Answer 2

The following command mentioned in the github thread that you mentioned above works for me:

sudo ln -s /usr/include/freetype2/ft2build.h /usr/include/

Answer 3

I had a similar issue solved by:

easy_install -U pip

pip install matplotlib