Why fatal error: 'yaml.h' file not found when installing PyYAML?

Question

I'm trying out downloading PyYAML and install it following the instructions here http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAML

So I downloaded the ZIP package: http://pyyaml.org/download/pyyaml/PyYAML-3.11.zip and then cd into that folder and run python setup.py --with-libyaml install, the error message I got is ext/_yaml.h:2:10: fatal error: 'yaml.h' file not found

But I checked the PyYAML-3.11 folder, the yaml.h is there...

UPDATE: I tried the methods here http://sandlininc.com/?p=500

$ sudo easy_install pip
$ brew install libyaml
$ sudo easy_install setuptools
$ pip install -U PyYAML

Then I tried the python setup.py --with-libyaml install again. I got the message error: /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/_yaml.so: Permission denied

Did I miss anything? Why the permission was denied? Thank you!

Answer 1

You can solve the issue by reinstalling the pyyaml package after adding required dependent libraries. Following are the steps:

1. Uninstall pyyaml

pip uninstall pyyaml

2. Install below packages

apt-get install libyaml-dev libpython2.7-dev

3. Install pyyaml again

pip install pyyaml