Problems when building PIL

[Joal Heagney]

Joonas Paalasmaa wrote:
> 
> I get the following error when trying to build PIL on Linux.
> Python version is 1.5.1 .

Everything up to here seems fine.

> rdx313 at myra:~/Imaging-1.1.2/libImaging$ make check
> ./coretest
> >>> processing lena.ppm...
> >>> elapsed time: 0
> >>> as far as we tested, everything seems to be ok...
> xv test.ppm
> make: xv: Command not found

This part is just the check, which uses  the non-GPL program xv, which
may not be available on your machine. Don't worry about it.

> rdx313 at myra:~/Imaging-1.1.2/libImaging$ cd ..
> rdx313 at myra:~/Imaging-1.1.2$ make -f Makefile.pre.in boot
> rm -f *.o *~
> rm -f *.a tags TAGS config.c Makefile.pre python sedscript
> rm -f *.so *.sl so_locations
> VERSION=`python -c "import sys; print sys.version[:3]"`; \
> installdir=`python -c "import sys; print sys.prefix"`; \
> exec_installdir=`python -c "import sys; print sys.exec_prefix"`; \
> make -f ./Makefile.pre.in VPATH=. srcdir=. \
>         VERSION=$VERSION \
>         installdir=$installdir \
>         exec_installdir=$exec_installdir \
>         Makefile
> make[1]: Entering directory `/home/rdx/web/rdx313/Imaging-1.1.2'
> make[1]: *** No rule to make target
> `/usr/lib/python1.5/config/Makefile', needed by `sedscript'.  Stop.
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/rdx/web/rdx313/Imaging-1.1.2'
> make: *** [boot] Error 2
> rdx313 at myra:~/Imaging-1.1.2$

Okay. I'm not entirely sure what's happening here. Did you enter the
make -f bit yourself? Is it something stated to do in the instructions? 
Oh hold on. Sorted it out. You need to install the python-devel rpm.
This contains the config/Makefile that python was built with, and which
is used to configure modules with. It also contains all the python
headers you'll need.
Happy pythoneering.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
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