Matplotlib install failure on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Question

I tried to install matplotlib on my MacBook Air, but it always gives me this error message:

 Processing matplotlib-1.1.1_notests.tar.gz
 Running matplotlib-1         


        

Answer 1

The following worked for matplotlib installation after installing python according to instructions from thegreenroom. Those instructions didn't work for me after I installed Python. I followed the instructions from Scipy.org to install numpy and scipy. Then I did (adapted from above answer):

brew install freetype
brew install libpng

However I got the same error message whether I installed with pip install matplotlib or trying to install from source, doing

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

in the matplotlib directory I cloned via git clone https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git.

The error persisted until I ran

brew link freetype

Then from the cloned matplotlib directory I ran

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

And the installation succeeded.

Answer 2

I am using MacOs 10.8 too, and I encountered the same problem regarding not finding ft2build.h header when I tried to install matplotlib, what I l did to resolve the reported issue is :

1) replacing "ft2build.h" in the following call within the file "setupext.py" :

                                 return self._check_for_pkg_config('freetype2', 
                                 'ft2build.h',
                                  min_version='2.4', 
                                  version=version)

by the complete path to the ft2build.h header, in my case :

                                return self._check_for_pkg_config('freetype2', 
                               '/usr/local/Cellar/freetype/2.5.2/include/freetype2/ft2build.h',
                                min_version='2.4', 
                                version=version)

Answer 3

I also use mac air with OS X ver 10.8.2.

Using following commands can get rid of this failure:
brew install freetype
brew install libpng
pip install matplotlib

That's all. There may be some warning in the installing process, but that does not affect.

Use following python code to test:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1,2,3,4])
plt.ylabel('some numbers')
plt.show()  

which is referred from the url: http://matplotlib.org/users/pyplot_tutorial.html.

Answer 4

I think, but have not tested, that the problem is solved in an upstream commit of matplotlib. Here is my reasons why:

Discussion:

https://github.com/vbraun/sage/commit/5d17ca989eb58559af8f43b43e368c378c1bf6bb

Fix:

https://github.com/vbraun/sage/blob/5d17ca989eb58559af8f43b43e368c378c1bf6bb/build/pkgs/matplotlib/patches/pkg-config.patch

I fixed the problem with Cyris's answer thought.

Answer 5

I also had a similar issue, and fixed it in a reasonably straightforward way using homebrew.

You don't have to link the freetype libraries for this reason. The main problem is, after you install freetype using homebrew, you are told to add

-I/usr/local/opt/freetype/include 

to your CPPFLAGS. However, this alone is not sufficient, and you also have to add the the freetype2 subfolder as well.

So in order to install matplotlib, do this:

brew install freetype
brew install libpng
LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/freetype/lib -L/usr/local/opt/libpng/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/freetype/include -I/usr/local/opt/libpng/include -I/usr/local/opt/freetype/include/freetype2" pip install matplotlib