Locust installation: psutil compilation failed with exit status 1 Python.h: No such file or directory

Question

I am installing locust using command pip3 install locust. I am faced with a series of errors which I am unable to understand and debug, kindly help me with what went wrong. Any help is appreciated.I have python 3.8 and python 2.7 both installed on my system.

Here are the errors shown to me

Building wheels for collected packages: ConfigArgParse, psutil, Flask-BasicAuth
  Building wheel for ConfigArgParse (setup.py) ... done
  Created wheel for ConfigArgParse: filename=ConfigArgParse-1.2.3-py3-none-any.whl size=19328 sha256=54fe7f6915dc7cc03d14e51ca38e015ba107e0e1234a06bdc0641dcc1ee72ab3
  Stored in directory: /home/saranyagupta05/.cache/pip/wheels/b4/12/fe/1e4628f6ec22a9580d9e8fbef23df7a03948a1edde0821d7f5
  Building wheel for psutil (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
   command: /usr/bin/python3 -u -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/tmp/pip-install-myqwf0hr/psutil/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/tmp/pip-install-myqwf0hr/psutil/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' bdist_wheel -d /tmp/pip-wheel-sk_etsgc
       cwd: /tmp/pip-install-myqwf0hr/psutil/
  Complete output (45 lines):
  running bdist_wheel
  running build
  running build_py
  creating build
  creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8
  creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_pslinux.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_pswindows.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_psposix.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_pssunos.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_common.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_psbsd.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_psosx.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/__init__.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_compat.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  copying psutil/_psaix.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/runner.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_memleaks.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_linux.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_windows.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_posix.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_unicode.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_contracts.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_sunos.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_testutils.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_aix.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/__main__.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_connections.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_misc.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_system.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/__init__.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_bsd.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_process.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  copying psutil/tests/test_osx.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/tests
  running build_ext
  building 'psutil._psutil_linux' extension
  creating build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.8
  creating build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil
  x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc -pthread -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -g -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -g -fwrapv -O2 -g -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fPIC -DPSUTIL_POSIX=1 -DPSUTIL_SIZEOF_PID_T=4 -DPSUTIL_VERSION=572 -DPSUTIL_LINUX=1 -I/usr/include/python3.8 -c psutil/_psutil_common.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.8/psutil/_psutil_common.o
  psutil/_psutil_common.c:9:10: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory
      9 | #include <Python.h>
        |          ^~~~~~~~~~
  compilation terminated.
  error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 1
  ----------------------------------------

Answer 1

Looks like you have Python installed, but not the header files/libraries for it.

Have a look at this answer to other question with the same underlying issue https://stackoverflow.com/a/21530768/1591921