pip install fails with FileNotFoundError: setup.py

Question

When running pip install, I'm getting errors like this:

$ pip install pycairo
Downloading/unpacking pycairo
  You are installing a potentially insecure and unverifiable file. Future versions of pip will default to disallowing insecure files.
  Downloading pycairo-1.10.0.tar.bz2 (246kB): 246kB downloaded
  Running setup.py egg_info for package pycairo
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 16, in <module>
    FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/naught101/.virtualenvs/virtualenv-3/build/pycairo/setup.py'
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 16, in <module>

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/naught101/.virtualenvs/virtualenv-3/build/pycairo/setup.py'

----------------------------------------
Cleaning up...
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in /home/naught101/.virtualenvs/virtualenv-3/build/pycairo
Storing complete log in /home/naught101/.pip/pip.log

This is happening for pycairo, sip.

$ pip --version
pip 1.4.1 from /home/naught101/.virtualenvs/virtualenv-3/lib/python3.3/site-packages (python 3.3)

Answer 1

pycairo is not built by setuptools, and therefore can't be installed by pip.

As the INSTALL documentation says:

Install Procedure
-----------------
$ ./waf --help     # shows available waf options
$ ./waf configure  # use --prefix and --libdir if necessary
                   # --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64  for Fedora 64-bit
$ ./waf build
$ ./waf install

Use
$ python3 ./waf ...
if you have python2 and python3 installed, and the default is python 2.

You can still use pip to fetch it:

$ pip install --download=. pycairo
Downloading/unpacking pycairo
  Downloading pycairo-1.10.0.tar.bz2 (246kB): 246kB downloaded
$ tar xf pycairo-1.10.0.tar.bz2
$ cd pycairo-1.10.0
$ python ./waf etc.

Just make sure you use the Python from your virtualenv, and pass the right options to the configure command (--prefix=$VIRTUAL_ENV should be sufficient, but don't quote me on that; you might also have to set the PYTHON environment variable to the path to your virtualenv Python, or other things).

---

Another option is to use an alternate set of Cairo bindings, like cairocffi. But that's obviously a big change, which may not be appropriate.