Trouble installing Dlib for python on Mac OSX 10.10

Question

I'm trying to install dlib-18.16 for python on my computer (running Mac OSX 10.10). I have boost python installed as well as X11, but I've been running into trouble when running ./compile_dlib_python_module.bat as instructed to after downloading the files.

The errors I get are numerous, but look something like this

[  1%] Building CXX object dlib_build/CMakeFiles/dlib.dir/gui_widgets/fonts.o
In file included from /Users/xxx/Downloads/dlib-18.16/dlib/gui_widgets/fonts.cpp:14:
/Users/xxx/Downloads/dlib-18.16/dlib/gui_widgets/nativefont.h:313:21: error: use
      of undeclared identifier 'XAllocColor'
                    XAllocColor(d, cmap, &xcol);

This continues for a while and ends with

/Users/xxx/Downloads/dlib-18.16/dlib/gui_widgets/nativefont.h:400:21: error: use
      of undeclared identifier 'XFillRectangle'
                    XFillRectangle(d, pix, gc, 0, 0, width, height);
                    ^
fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-ferror-limit=]
20 errors generated.
make[2]: *** [dlib_build/CMakeFiles/dlib.dir/gui_widgets/fonts.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [dlib_build/CMakeFiles/dlib.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

I've checked for some of the missing functions like XFillRectangle, and found them declared in some .h files in the anaconda install of python (when looking at the dlib_build files, the installer seems to have located the anaconda install). Does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this?

Answer 1

I realized that I had to go into the CMakeCache.txt file and manually change the X11 path from anaconda to usr/X11, as the anaconda versions of the X11 .h files were missing some of these XQuartz functions. Everything works now.

Answer 2

I had this issue with the version in PyPi ( 19.4.0 ). Installing directly from source ( 19.4.99 ) seems to work.

So something between those two versions has resolved this.

Commands to install from source:

git clone https://github.com/davisking/dlib.git
cd dlib
pip install .

FYI, here are the Xlib.h files I have on my system as the presumption is it was picking up a different version of XLib.h which didn't have these symbols.

Running on OS-X 10.11.4 with Python 2.7. I definitely have XQuartz installed.

$ mdfind -name Xlib.h
/usr/local/Cellar/dlib/19.4/share/doc/dlib/docs/dlib/gui_core/xlib.h.html
/usr/local/Cellar/dlib/19.4/include/dlib/gui_core/xlib.h
/Users/<username>/Workspace/dlib/dlib/gui_core/xlib.h
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.4/Headers/X11/Xlib.h
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Headers/X11/Xlib.h
/opt/X11/include/X11/Xlib.h
/opt/X11/include/cairo/cairo-xlib.h
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.4/Headers/X11/Xlib.h
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Headers/X11/Xlib.h