pip install pycairo fails on osx: 'pkg-config' search path problems

Question

I've been trying to install pycairo on a mac os x. I'm getting an error message,

Initially I was getting 'pkg-config' not found . After installing that through brew, I get Package cairo was not found in the pkg-config search path . In principle I could try to edit the search path, but since this is going through pip, I would have expected this to be all taken care of. Is there a way to tell pip to put the stuff where pkg-config knows to look?

Here's the full message.

> pip install pycairo
Collecting pycairo
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/48/20/5e83af98eb897935bf7dc39455e892ba866feebb9b7c3b392982866f9958/pycairo-1.18.1.tar.gz
Building wheels for collected packages: pycairo
  Building wheel for pycairo (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Complete output from command /Applications/anaconda/bin/python -u -c 'import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='"'"'/private/var/folders/f2/bzrj46j11gzdk19j91tp1sq80000gq/T/pip-install-lahb8lq4/pycairo/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' bdist_wheel -d /private/var/folders/f2/bzrj46j11gzdk19j91tp1sq80000gq/T/pip-wheel-scnvplas --python-tag cp36:
  ERROR: running bdist_wheel
  running build
  running build_py
  creating build
  creating build/lib.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6
  creating build/lib.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6/cairo
  copying cairo/__init__.py -> build/lib.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6/cairo
  copying cairo/__init__.pyi -> build/lib.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6/cairo
  copying cairo/py.typed -> build/lib.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6/cairo
  running build_ext
  Package cairo was not found in the pkg-config search path.
  Perhaps you should add the directory containing `cairo.pc'
  to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
  No package 'cairo' found
  Command '['pkg-config', '--print-errors', '--exists', 'cairo >= 1.13.1']' returned non-zero exit status 1.
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pycairo

I get the same error if I use pip to install an older version.

There is a similar question here: How can I fix the problem when installing pycairo on windows? , but it's related to Windows, and the error looks to be different to me (also I'm not satisfied by the answer).

Any suggestion for how to fix this?

Answer 1

I ran into this issue too.

I am using Q4OS(Debian), and do not have brew.

Here is these steps I manage to solve this issue.

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y pkg-config
sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev
sudo pip install pycairo

Answer 2

I could solve the issue with the help of the comments from the question. In summary:

brew install pkg-config
brew install cairo
pip install pycairo