"ssl module in Python is not available"

Question

still advancing in my tutorial to learn python, I was told to do

sudo -H pip install requests

I get the following :

pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.
Collecting requests
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/requests/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: Can't connect to HTTPS URL because the SSL module is not available. - skipping
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement requests (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for requests

would someone know what I need to do to fix that once for all ?

thanks so much in advance

Answer 1

Running ./configure with --enable-optimizations did the trick.

Here are the steps that worked for me on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS box-

1. The lines related to ssl in the Modules/Setup* files are commented

2. cd to the directory where you have the Python tar extracted

   cd /../../../Python-3.7.4/

3. Run configure with optimizations enabled

   ./configure --enable-optimizations

4. Run make and then make install

   make

   make install

Answer 2

I encountered this problem running pip on Powershell on Windows, using the Anaconda distribution. I was running it inside VSCode, but I don't think it makes much difference.

A quick turnaround for me was installing what I needed using the Anaconda prompt, which works fine.