Installing Python Imaging Library (PIL) under virtualenv or buildout

I have greatly struggled to have PIL library support in isolated Python environments like virtualenv –no-site-packages.

For example, when installing Satchmo shop under virtualenv:

../bin/clonesatchmo.pyhe Python Imaging Library is not installed. Install from your distribution binaries.
../bin/clonesatchmo.py
The Python Imaging Library is not installed. Install from your distribution binaries.

Though it clearly is there, installed by easy_install PIL command:

ls ../lib/python2.5/site-packages/PIL-1.1.7-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg
ArgImagePlugin.py	 ExifTags.py		  GimpGradientFile.pyc...

Does anyone know if this problem is with PIL itself, eggified PIL or something else?

In any case, there is an easy workaround: use system-wide PIL (sudo apt-get install python-imaging) and symlink PIL from your site-wide installation under the isolated Python environment:

(satchmo-py25)mulli% pwd
/srv/plone/mmaspecial/satchmo-py25/lib/python2.5/site-packages
(satchmo-py25)mulli% ln -s /usr/lib/python2.4/PIL .

That works for now, but I’d like to learn how to make virtualenv and buildout install PIL egg bullet-proof way.

12 thoughts on “Installing Python Imaging Library (PIL) under virtualenv or buildout”

I have had same time of problem recently which I solved under Mac OSX by easy installing PILwoTk. This makes me believe the standard egg has an issue…

I followed the advice from this blog http://davidjb.com/blog/2009/06/virtualenv-plone-and-ubuntu-904-jaunty

the important part was to run these commands in the virtualenv
easy_install –find-links http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ Imaging
easy_install –find-links http://download.zope.org/distribution PILwoTK

Haven’t had time to investigate why it works, but it does.

There are a few options, symlinking a different python’s egg of it isn’t a good idea.

I do:

easy_install http://dist.repoze.org/PIL-1.1.6.tar.gz

which is a repackaging that works with setuptools. Alternatively, download the source distribution and run its install manually:

$ curl -O http://effbot.org/media/downloads/Imaging-1.1.7.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf Imaging-1.1.7.tar.gz
$ cd Imaging-1.1.7
$ python setup.py install

Matt

It seems that setuptools doesn’t find PIL egg. The solution I found is simplier :

$ cd /srv/plone/mmaspecial/satchmo-py25/lib/python2.5/site-packages
$ ln -s PIL-1.1.7-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg PIL

This is enough to get it works with your egg and works with all eggs. Why it doesn’t work with this egg… may be ‘x86_64’ that add an underscore where setuptools doesn’t expect to find one.