Matplotlib install failure on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Question

I tried to install matplotlib on my MacBook Air, but it always gives me this error message:

 Processing matplotlib-1.1.1_notests.tar.gz
 Running matplotlib-1         


        

Answer 1

The following worked for matplotlib installation after installing python according to instructions from thegreenroom. Those instructions didn't work for me after I installed Python. I followed the instructions from Scipy.org to install numpy and scipy. Then I did (adapted from above answer):

brew install freetype
brew install libpng

However I got the same error message whether I installed with pip install matplotlib or trying to install from source, doing

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

in the matplotlib directory I cloned via git clone https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git.

The error persisted until I ran

brew link freetype

Then from the cloned matplotlib directory I ran

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

And the installation succeeded.