Python GDAL package missing header file when installing via pip

Question

I'm trying to install gdal from pip pip install gdal inside a virtual environment (Ubuntu). It fails because it cannot find cpl_port.h

extensions/gdal_wrap.cpp:2853:22: fatal error: cpl_port.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated 

However GDAL is installed correctly and the header file is located at /usr/include/gdal/cpl_port.h. Is there some environment variable for GDAL that needs to be set in order for pip to find the header files?

Answer 1

As suggested in the other thread, exporting some shell variables before running pip worked flawlessly. A path for *_INCLUDE_PATH can be found with gdal-config --cflags.

# GDAL library must have been installed sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev  # Set up pip and/or virtualenv stuff ...  # Now install Python binding for GDAL export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal export C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal pip install GDAL 

Answer 2

Tomyun's answer worked for me, with the proviso that you have to ensure that the version of GDAL-dev installed via apt-get matches the version being installed by pip.

For Ubuntu 14.04, the commands are:

# GDAL library must have been installed sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev  # Set up pip and/or virtualenv stuff ...  # Now install Python binding for GDAL export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal export C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal pip3 install GDAL=1.10.0