building Python from source with zlib support

Question

When building Python 3.2.3 from source on Ubuntu 12.04, the zlib module is not available.

I downloaded the official source distribution from python.org, and attempte

Answer 1

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

is what worked for me.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem on CentOS 6.3 and python 3.2.3

I solved it by:

Edit /Modules/Setup and uncomment the line:

zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz

change to directory /Modules/zlib:

./configure
make
sudo make install

then compiled my python3.2 source.

and was then able to test import zlib and it all worked fine :)

Answer 3

I am using CentOS 6.6 and was recieving zlib errors. None of the other answers proposed here worked for me (including the fix for CentOS 6.3 of uncommenting a line in Modules/Setup). I have fixed it using the following commands.

yum groupinstall "Development tools"
yum install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel readline-devel tk-devel gdbm-devel db4-devel libpcap-devel xz-devel

Then configuring and installing python as follows:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath /usr/local/lib"
make && make altinstall

I can now import zlib in /usr/local/bin/python2.7 with no problems.

These instructions are slightly modified from an article found here.

Answer 4

The easiest solution I found, is on python.org:

sudo apt-get build-dep python3.6

If that package is not available for your system, try reducing the minor version until you find a package that is available in your system’s package manager.

If you see something like this: E: You must put some ‘source’ URIs in your sources.list, Open Software & Updates and enable Source code.

I tried explaining details, on a blog post.