Installing Pygame for Python 3.1.2 in Ubuntu

Question

I'm reading the book Introduction to Computer Science Using Python and Pygame by Paul Craven (note: legally available for free online). In the book, he uses a combination of Python 3.1.3 and Pygame 1.9.1 . In my Linux Ubuntu machine, I have Python 3.1.2 but even after I sudo apt-get installed python-pygame (version 1.9.1), Python 3.1.2 can't import pygame.

Python 3.1.2 (r312:79147, Sep 27 2010, 09:45:41) 
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pygame
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named pygame

Python 2.6.5 imports it without fuss, however,

Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Apr 16 2010, 13:09:56) 
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pygame
>>> 

Are you aware of any issues for Linux/Ubuntu's Python 3.1.2 (Prof. Craven used Windows in his book)? How come Pygame 1.9.1 worked for Python 3.1.3 but not for 3.1.2?

Thanks for any pointers. (--,)

Answer 1

PyGame on Python 3 remains experimental, but these steps worked for me on Ubuntu 11.10:

sudo apt-get install mercurial python3-dev libjpeg-dev libpng12-dev libportmidi-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsmpeg-dev libx11-dev ttf-freefont libavformat-dev libswscale-dev
hg clone -u 01b2cb16dc17 https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame
cd pygame
python3 config.py
2to3 setup.py -w
python3 setup.py build
sudo python3 setup.py install

(You may remove the -u 01b2cb16dc17 to try the latest version; 01b2cb16dc17 worked for me.)