What is the meaning of “Failed building wheel for X” in pip install?

Question

This is a truly popular question here at SO, but none of the many answers I have looked at, clearly explain what this error really mean, and why it occurs.

One sour

Answer 1

I would like to add that if you only have Python3 on your system then you need to start using pip3 instead of pip.

You can install pip3 using the following command;

sudo apt install python3-pip -y

After this you can try to install the package you need with;

sudo pip3 install <package>

Answer 2

Try this:

sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev libpq-dev

It has worked for me when I have installed these two.

See the link here for more information

Answer 3

On Ubuntu 18.04, I ran into this issue because the apt package for wheel does not include the wheel command. I think pip tries to import the wheel python package, and if that succeeds assumes that the wheel command is also available. Ubuntu breaks that assumption.

The apt python3 code package is named python3-wheel. This is installed automatically because python3-pip recommends it.

The apt python3 wheel command package is named python-wheel-common. Installing this too fixes the "failed building wheel" errors for me.

Answer 4

This may Help you ! ....

Uninstalling pycparser:

pip uninstall pycparser

Reinstall pycparser:

pip install pycparser

I got same error while installing termcolor and I fixed it by reinstalling it .

Answer 5

I had the same problem while installing Brotli

ERROR

Failed building wheel for Brotli

I solved it by downloading the .whl file from here and installing it using the below command

C:\Users\{user_name}\Downloads>pip install Brotli-1.0.9-cp39-cp39-win_amd64.whl

Answer 6

In my case, update the pip versión after create the venv, this update pip from 9.0.1 to 20.3.1

python3 -m venv env/python
source env/python/bin/activate
pip3 install pip --upgrade

But, the message was...

Using legacy 'setup.py install' for django-avatar, since package 'wheel' is not installed.

Then, I install wheel package after update pip

python3 -m venv env/python
source env/python/bin/activate
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install wheel

And the message was...

Building wheel for django-avatar (setup.py): started
default:   Building wheel for django-avatar (setup.py): finished with status 'done'