Installing Ta-lib creates gcc error

Question

I am getting gcc error when trying to install Ta-lib as a global package on my mac.

I get an error below:

   gcc -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -Wunreachable-code -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I//anaconda/include -arch x86_64 -I//anaconda/include -arch x86_64 -I//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/local/include -I/opt/include -I/opt/local/include -I//anaconda/include/python3.6m -c talib/common.c -o build/temp.macosx-10.7-x86_64-3.6/talib/common.o
    talib/common.c:242:10: fatal error: 'ta-lib/ta_defs.h' file not found
    #include "ta-lib/ta_defs.h"
             ^
    1 error generated.
    error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

I am not sure I understand what this means? pip install Ta-lib package is missing a file? It would make sense but it installs fine for my Ubuntu server, just having issues with my mac. Ubuntu is also running Python with Anaconda with same version.

My gcc version below:

➜  ~ which gcc
/usr/bin/gcc
➜  ~ gcc --version
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.42.1)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin16.4.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin

My Python installation information below:

➜  ~ which python
/anaconda/bin/python
➜  ~ python --version
Python 3.6.1 :: Anaconda custom (x86_64)

I would actually prefer Ta-lib installed as global conda package as I end up using it with most of my notebooks that are pretty ad-hoc work.

Answer 1

Yesterday it took me much time to solve the problem but I still couldn't make it. Just now I succeeded to install TA-Lib! Below is the solution.

First I run 'brew install ta-lib' in the Mac terminal. Then I open the PyCharm, file->default settings->project interpreter->choose python 3.6(my python version)->'+' and input 'TA-Lib' -> install->FINISH!

Before I solve the problem, I have a look at the TA-Lib folder downloaded from the Internet. It's said in the README.md that

"Sometimes installation will produce build errors like this:

func.c:256:28: fatal error: ta-lib/ta_libc.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated.

This typically means that it can't find the underlying TA-Lib library, a dependency which needs to be installed."

and then I find

"### Dependencies

To use TA-Lib for python, you need to have the TA-Lib already installed:

Mac OS X

$ brew install ta-lib

Windows

Download ta-lib-0.4.0-msvc.zip and unzip to C:\ta-lib " Therefore the problem is solved. I hope this will help you.

Answer 2

1) Install ta-lib using brew.

brew install ta-lib

2) Then Ran the pip install TA-Lib command.

The above step should work in most of the cases, but one of my friend was facing some issue with gcc, if you are facing any issue related to gcc, try installing gcc. For installing gcc you can use the command:
brew install gcc

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I had a lot of problems with this one as well. I'm adding my answer here as none of the answers I'd read gave me this approach which was the solution for me and will be for those whose "homebrew" does not install in a directory the ta-lib setup is looking for.

I had installed the "underlying" ta-lib previously with brew install ta-lib, but it was still giving the same error. I downloaded the ta-lib python project with git clone https://github.com/mrjbq7/ta-lib.git so I could examine and change the routes where it was looking for my "underlying" ta-lib which it wasn't finding. In setup.py you can see the directories in which it is looking for the ta-lib that brew installed. But mine wasn't in any of the directories mentioned there. I found where brew had installed ta-lib by running brew --prefix ta-lib. This gave me the base directory. Then I could add the corresponding include and lib directories to the directory lists. I then ran python setup.py install from the ta-lib project I downloaded from github and it worked!

To be more precise: running brew --prefix ta-lib gave me something like /Users/myuser/homebrew/opt/ta-lib. In the file setup.py around the line 25, there is a variable called include_dirs which is set to a list of directories. To that variable I added my location for the include directory, that is /Users/myuser/homebrew/opt/ta-lib/include. Around line 36 in the same file, there is another variable, lib_talib_dirs, and to that variable I also added my location for the lib directory, that is /Users/myuser/homebrew/opt/ta-lib/lib. Then I ran python setup.py install etc.

Answer 4

This all-in-one-line solution worked for me on Linux-based systems - Tested on macOS and Debian.

brew install ta-lib && export TA_INCLUDE_PATH=$(brew --prefix ta-lib)/include && export TA_LIBRARY_PATH=$(brew --prefix ta-lib)/lib && pip install TA-Lib