altinstall error

Hello I have just install python as highlighted below there is an error for altinstall, should I use make install?

 ./configure make sudo make altinstall

or

./configure
make
sudo make install

I was following a tutorial and this was the error.

File "/home/plutes/Downloads/Python-3.6.6rc1/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 117, in _bootstrap return _run_pip(args + [p[0] for p in _PROJECTS], additional_paths) File "/home/plutes/Downloads/Python-3.6.6rc1/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 27, in _run_pip import pip._internal
**zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available
Makefile:1113: recipe for target 'altinstall' failed
make: *** [altinstall] Error 1**
plutes@plutes-Lenovo-G50-30:~/Downloads/Python-3.6.6rc1$ cd
plutes@plutes-Lenovo-G50-30:~$ python
python python3 python3.6m-config python3m
python2 python3.6 python3.7
python2.7 python3.6m python3.7m
plutes@plutes-Lenovo-G50-30:~$ python3.6
Python 3.6.6rc1 (default, Jun 17 2018, 21:36:49)
[GCC 7.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> help()
Welcome to Python 3.6's help utility!
as you can see it works, but I am unsure about future uses. thanks for any guidance.
plutes@plutes-Lenovo-G50-30:~$ python3.6
Python 3.6.6rc1 (default, Jun 17 2018, 21:36:49)
[GCC 7.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print("Hello, World!")
Hello, World!
>>> 

5 Answers

I've just experienced the same issue with installing python3.7.3 on ubuntu18.04. Following this message and running:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 bzip2 libbz2-dev \
zlib1g-dev libssl-dev openssl libgdbm-dev libgdbm-compat-dev liblzma-dev libreadline-dev \
libncursesw5-dev libffi-dev uuid-dev

Allowed me to successfully run sudo make altinstall.

I had the same issue using Ubuntu and the two top answers did not work. I used the answer I got from and tried again and it worked. basically I did:

sudo apt-get install -y make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev \
libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev \
xz-utils tk-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev python-openssl git

and then:

sudo make altinstall

Use the following commands in this order:

1. ./configure
2. make clean
3. make
4. sudo make install

Just in case somebody reads this thread, the issue is actually that a dependency is missing. In this case, zlib headers.

Basically, you must:

1.- Enable the deb-src .

 echo "deb-src bionic main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

2.- sudo apt update

3.- Install python deps

sudo apt-get build-dep python3.6

Now you can run make altinstall

You can read more details at .

Installing following dependencies will solve the issue:

sudo apt install build-essential zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libgdbm-dev libnss3-dev
libssl-dev libreadline-dev libffi-dev wget