Virtualenv no module named zlib

Question

I\'m trying to create Python 2.7 virtual env under Python2.6, I\'m simply running:

virtualenv --python=python27 #python27 correctly leads to my python installati         


        

Answer 1

Your Python must have been compiled without Python support, most likely because zlib-devel was not installed when it was compiled. Looking at the output of make or make install you should see something like the following (taken from a build of Python 2.7.6):

Python build finished, but the necessary bits to build these modules were not found:
[...]        zlib            
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

To solve your problem you need to install zlib-devel (if it is not installed) and recompile or reinstall Python.