pip install libvirt-python fails in virtualenv

Question

I currently am trying to install libvirt-python to a virtualenv.

When I run it I get this output

$ pip install libvirt-python
Collecting libvirt-python
  Using cached libvirt-python-3.5.0.tar.gz
Building wheels for collected packages: libvirt-python
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for libvirt-python ... error
  Complete output from command /home/john/virtenvs/hw/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-3_fz8vok/libvirt-python/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/tmpg1j1nq_wpip-wheel- --python-tag cp35:
  Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
  Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
  to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
  No package 'libvirt' found
  Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
  Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
  to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
  No package 'libvirt' found
  running bdist_wheel
  running build
  /usr/bin/pkg-config --print-errors --atleast-version=0.9.11 libvirt
  Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
  Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
  to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
  No package 'libvirt' found
  error: command '/usr/bin/pkg-config' failed with exit status 1

  ----------------------------------------
  Failed building wheel for libvirt-python
  Running setup.py clean for libvirt-python
Failed to build libvirt-python
Installing collected packages: libvirt-python
  Running setup.py install for libvirt-python ... error
    Complete output from command /home/john/virtenvs/hw/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-3_fz8vok/libvirt-python/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-leu8ei67-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/john/virtenvs/hw/include/site/python3.5/libvirt-python:
    Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'libvirt' found
    Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'libvirt' found
    running install
    running build
    /usr/bin/pkg-config --print-errors --atleast-version=0.9.11 libvirt
    Package libvirt was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libvirt.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'libvirt' found
    error: command '/usr/bin/pkg-config' failed with exit status 1

    ----------------------------------------
Command "/home/john/virtenvs/hw/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-3_fz8vok/libvirt-python/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-leu8ei67-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/john/virtenvs/hw/include/site/python3.5/libvirt-python" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-3_fz8vok/libvirt-python/

Without the virtualenv I'm able to import libvirt into my python shell.

Answer 1

The pip installation of libvirt-python requires the file libvirt.pc to be present on your system, because the installation script uses pkg-config to check the package details of libvirt.

For Debian, I found that this file is provided by the package `libvirt-dev'. So you could try

apt-get install libvirt-dev

or something equivalent for your distribution.