Install error: ftheader.h: No such file or directory

Question

When I am trying to build matplotlib-1.3.1, I am getting the below freetype header errors. Probably it is not finding the ftheader.h. Any idea on how to solve this problem?

Answer 1

Once installed (properly) the development package, the Freetype headers shall be in $(includedir)/freetype/freetype2 and $(includedir)/freetype2/freetype/config, with the only exception of ft2build.h which is in $(includedir).

It seems from the message you showed that indeed there is a ft2build.h file in /usr/include (a natural place for $(includedir)), yet the rest of the headers are not at the correct place.

I do not know exactly how to correct this since it is probably an issue with your particular distribution and the way you installed it, but I feel the most natural fix is to uninstall (properly) the freetype-dev[el] package, then re-install it, using of course the distribution-provided version which matches your installed .so, apparently 2.3.11.

Installing Freetype 2.5.0.1 will not help you until you successfully build the library, then install it in your system successfully; only then you will have the headers installed in $(includedir) and its sub-directories.