[Python-Dev] Is this a bug or a feature?

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Patrick Wallinger <the.hiker at gmail.com> wrote:
> zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available
>

There may very well be a bug here of the form of "zlib dependency is
considered soft, but then something else breaks". However, in your
current situation, my recommendation would be to install the zlib
development libraries and retry the build. You may be able to get that
with:

$ sudo apt-get build-dep python3

or possibly search your package manager for "zlib*-dev" (on my Debian,
it's zlib1g-dev). That should give you the full de/compression suite,
which will in turn make ensurepip work.

ChrisA