Pyenv unable to install older versions of Python 3 due to `configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables`

Question

I've been trying to use pyenv to install older versions of python3. I've tried 3.0.1 , 3.1.0 , 3.1.1 , and 3.1.2 . I kept getting the error

ImportError: No module named _ssl
ERROR: The Python ssl extension was not compiled. Missing the OpenSSL lib?

Following some documentation from pyenv I tried updating my command to explicitly pass the location of the headers and libraries like so:

➜ CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/bin/openssl/include" \
LDFLAGS="-L/usr/bin/openssl/lib" \
pyenv install -v 3.1.2

That seems to have gotten past that error but now I'm getting the error configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables

The only suggestion I can find for Ubuntu is to install/update the build-essential package which I've done and was already installed and fully updated.

I can see that the gcc command is working. So what else am I missing?

Full Error

➜ CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/bin/openssl/include" \  
LDFLAGS="-L/usr/bin/openssl/lib" \
pyenv install -v 3.1.2
/tmp/python-build.20230107155624.97473 ~/GitProjects/VWAP_backtest
Downloading Python-3.1.2.tar.gz...
-> https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.1.2/Python-3.1.2.tgz
/tmp/python-build.20230107155624.97473/Python-3.1.2 /tmp/python-build.20230107155624.97473 ~/GitProjects/VWAP_backtest
Installing Python-3.1.2...
patching file ./setup.py
patching file ./Lib/ssl.py
patching file ./Modules/_ssl.c
checking for --enable-universalsdk... no
checking for --with-universal-archs... 32-bit
checking MACHDEP... linux5
checking machine type as reported by uname -m... x86_64
checking for --without-gcc... no
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... 
configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.

BUILD FAILED (Ubuntu 22.04 using python-build 2.3.9-18-g25c974d5)

Answer 1

Looks like the libssl-dev package is missing. Try installing that library along with some others you might have missed by using thepyenv build instructions .

In particular you should install the pyenv dependencies. For example for the Debian OS you would want:

sudo apt update; sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev \
libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev curl llvm \
libncursesw5-dev xz-utils tk-dev libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev