Failed to install Python Cryptography package with PIP and setup.py

Question

When I try to install the Cryptography package for Python through either pip install cryptography or by downloading the package from their site and running python setup.py, I get the following error:

---

D:\Anaconda\Scripts\pip-script.py run on 02/27/14 16:13:17
Downloading/unpacking cryptography
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/
  URLs to search for versions for cryptography:
  * https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/
  Analyzing links from page https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp26/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2-cp26-none-win32.whl#md5=13e5c4b19520e7dc6f07c6502b3f74e2 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp26/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1-cp26-none-win32.whl#md5=00e733648ee5cdb9e58876238b1328f8 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp27/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2-cp27-none-win32.whl#md5=013ccafa6a5a3ea92c73f2c1c4879406 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp27/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1-cp27-none-win32.whl#md5=127d6a5dc687250721f892d55720a06c (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp32/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2-cp32-none-win32.whl#md5=051424a36e91039807b72f112333ded3 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp32/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1-cp32-none-win32.whl#md5=53f6f57db8e952d64283baaa14cbde3d (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp33/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2-cp33-none-win32.whl#md5=302812c1c1a035cf9ba3292f8dbf3f9e (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Skipping https://pypi.python.org/packages/cp33/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1-cp33-none-win32.whl#md5=81acca90caf8a45f2ca73f3f9859fae4 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/) because it is not compatible with this Python
    Found link https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.1.tar.gz#md5=bdc1c5fe069deca7467b71a0cc538f17 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/), version: 0.1
    Found link https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1.tar.gz#md5=872fc04268dadc66a0305ae5ab1c123b (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/), version: 0.2.1
    Found link https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.tar.gz#md5=8a3d21e837a21e1b7634ee1f22b06bb6 (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/), version: 0.2
  Using version 0.2.1 (newest of versions: 0.2.1, 0.2, 0.1)
  Downloading from URL https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/c/cryptography/cryptography-0.2.1.tar.gz#md5=872fc04268dadc66a0305ae5ab1c123b (from https://pypi.python.org/simple/cryptography/)
  Running setup.py (path:c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco\cryptography\setup.py) egg_info for package cryptography
    In file included from c/_cffi_backend.c:7:0:
    c/misc_win32.h:225:23: error: two or more data types in declaration specifiers
    c/misc_win32.h:225:1: warning: useless type name in empty declaration [enabled by default]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'convert_array_from_object':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1105:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1105:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1130:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1130:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1150:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1150:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'convert_struct_from_object':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1183:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1183:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1196:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1196:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_repr':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1583:13: warning: unknown conversion type character 'L' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1583:13: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1595:9: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1595:9: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdataowning_repr':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1647:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1647:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function '_cdata_get_indexed_ptr':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function '_cdata_getslicearg':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_ass_slice':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1983:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:1983:22: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_call':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cast_to_integer_or_char':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'new_array_type':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:3480:9: warning: unknown conversion type character 'l' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:3480:9: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'b_complete_struct_or_union':
    c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]
    c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 17, in <module>
      File "c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco\cryptography\setup.py", line 113, in <module>
        "build": cffi_build,
      File "D:\Anaconda\lib\distutils\core.py", line 112, in setup
        _setup_distribution = dist = klass(attrs)
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 239, in __init__
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 264, in fetch_build_eggs
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 580, in resolve
        dist = best[req.key] = env.best_match(req, ws, installer)
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 818, in best_match
        return self.obtain(req, installer) # try and download/install
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 830, in obtain
        return installer(requirement)
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 314, in fetch_build_egg
      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 593, in easy_install

      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 623, in install_item

      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 809, in install_eggs

      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 1015, in build_and_install

      File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 1003, in run_setup

    distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    In file included from c/_cffi_backend.c:7:0:

c/misc_win32.h:225:23: error: two or more data types in declaration specifiers

c/misc_win32.h:225:1: warning: useless type name in empty declaration [enabled by default]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'convert_array_from_object':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1105:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1105:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1130:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1130:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1150:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1150:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'convert_struct_from_object':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1183:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1183:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1196:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1196:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_repr':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1583:13: warning: unknown conversion type character 'L' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1583:13: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1595:9: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1595:9: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdataowning_repr':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1647:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1647:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function '_cdata_get_indexed_ptr':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1820:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function '_cdata_getslicearg':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1872:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_ass_slice':

c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1951:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1969:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1983:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:1983:22: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cdata_call':

c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2367:30: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'cast_to_integer_or_char':

c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2916:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: format '%s' expects argument of type 'char *', but argument 3 has type 'Py_ssize_t' [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:2928:26: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'new_array_type':

c/_cffi_backend.c:3480:9: warning: unknown conversion type character 'l' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:3480:9: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

c/_cffi_backend.c: In function 'b_complete_struct_or_union':

c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: unknown conversion type character 'z' in format [-Wformat]

c/_cffi_backend.c:3878:22: warning: too many arguments for format [-Wformat-extra-args]

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 17, in <module>

  File "c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco\cryptography\setup.py", line 113, in <module>

    "build": cffi_build,

  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\distutils\core.py", line 112, in setup

    _setup_distribution = dist = klass(attrs)

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 239, in __init__

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 264, in fetch_build_eggs

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 580, in resolve

    dist = best[req.key] = env.best_match(req, ws, installer)

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 818, in best_match

    return self.obtain(req, installer) # try and download/install

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pkg_resources.py", line 830, in obtain

    return installer(requirement)

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\dist.py", line 314, in fetch_build_egg

  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 593, in easy_install



  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 623, in install_item



  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 809, in install_eggs



  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 1015, in build_and_install



  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\setuptools\command\easy_install.py", line 1003, in run_setup



distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

----------------------------------------
Cleaning up...
  Removing temporary dir c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco...
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco\cryptography
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pip-1.5.4-py2.7.egg\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pip-1.5.4-py2.7.egg\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pip-1.5.4-py2.7.egg\pip\req.py", line 1229, in prepare_files
    req_to_install.run_egg_info()
  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pip-1.5.4-py2.7.egg\pip\req.py", line 325, in run_egg_info
    command_desc='python setup.py egg_info')
  File "D:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pip-1.5.4-py2.7.egg\pip\util.py", line 697, in call_subprocess
    % (command_desc, proc.returncode, cwd))
InstallationError: Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in c:\users\paco\appdata\local\temp\pip_build_Paco\cryptography

I found other egg_info error posts (here and here) but the solutions there provided wouldn't solve my problem. Also, I am able to install other packages through PIP.

PIP version 1.5.4 setuptools version 2.2

Oldworld

POINTER FOR EVERYONE - cryptography now ships prebuild wheels for most OSes, so a pip install cryptography` should work out of the box. – Armure

Answer 1

I had a similar issue, and found I was simply missing a dependency (libssl-dev, for me). As referenced in https://cryptography.io/en/latest/installation/, ensure that all dependencies are met:

On Windows

If you’re on Windows you’ll need to make sure you have OpenSSL installed. There are pre-compiled binaries available. If your installation is in an unusual location set the LIB and INCLUDE environment variables to include the corresponding locations. For example:

C:\> \path\to\vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64
C:\> set LIB=C:\OpenSSL-1.0.1f-64bit\lib;%LIB%
C:\> set INCLUDE=C:\OpenSSL-1.0.1f-64bit\include;%INCLUDE%
C:\> pip install cryptography

Building cryptography on Linux

cryptography should build very easily on Linux provided you have a C compiler, headers for Python (if you’re not using pypy), and headers for the OpenSSL and libffi libraries available on your system.

For Debian and Ubuntu, the following command will ensure that the required dependencies are installed:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev

For Fedora and RHEL-derivatives, the following command will ensure that the required dependencies are installed:

sudo yum install gcc libffi-devel python-devel openssl-devel

You should now be able to build and install cryptography with the usual.

pip install cryptography

Kiyokokiyoshi

Thanks, worked perfectly! Having VS2010 I had to: SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS100COMNTOOLS% and add "mt" suffix to lib names – Pope

// , I can confirm that this worked on a CEntOS 6.3 machine with Python 3.3 with a similar error to that posted in the original question. – Parsee

Seems that libffi-dev package is the key at all. I didn't need to configure anything more, but that package name did not appear in the error log :-/ Thank you. – Nonconformist

While trying to pip install bcrypt, this (specifically the libssl-dev step) solved my issue. Thanks so much! – Snafu

Don't forget to replace python-dev with python3-dev if you are using python3 – Alberta

Thanks. Worked on Linux Mint (Serena). – Tiebold

@Alberta where should I change python-dev with python-dev3. actually I facing the same issue with AWS linux. I have asked question link but did not get the answer till now. – Johnsiejohnson

@Alberta ok. I am not using ubuntu. I am running that command on aws -linux server. could you please guide me with this issue ? – Johnsiejohnson

FWIW I am running Debian 9 and had to do a apt-get install libssl1.0-dev before I quit getting errors during pip install cryptography – Confectioner

But I am getting this error: Failed to build cryptography ERROR: Could not build wheels for cryptography which use PEP 517 and cannot be installed directly. I might be doing something wrong here. Any help? I have raised a question as well here – Ormond

Answer 2

This is a condensed version of the information found on cryptography's installation docs page. Consult that page for the latest details.

Since this SO question keeps coming up I'll drop a response here too (I am one of the pyca/cryptography developers). Here's what you need to reliably install pyca/cryptography on the 3 major platforms.

Please note in all these cases it is highly recommended that you install into a virtualenv and not into the global package space. This is not specific to cryptography but rather is generic advice to keep your Python installation reliable. The global package space in OS provided Pythons is owned by the system and installing things via pip into it is asking for trouble.

Windows

Upgrade to the latest pip and just pip install cryptography

cryptography and cffi are both shipped as statically linked wheels.

macOS (OS X)

Upgrade to the latest pip and just pip install cryptography

cryptography and cffi are both shipped as statically linked wheels. This will work for pyenv Python, system Python, homebrew Python, etc. As long as you're on the latest pip you won't even need a compiler.

Linux

Users with the latest pip (upgrade!) running on a glibc-based or musl-based distribution and on x86/x86-64/aarch64 no longer need a compiler or headers because you'll get a precompiled wheel automatically. So, first thing you should try is upgrading your pip and installing the latest cryptography version as older versions don't get newer wheel types.

If you aren't manylinux/musllinux compatible or wish to compile against your own OpenSSL then here's what you need to do:

You'll need a C compiler, a Rust compiler, libffi + its development headers, and openssl + its development headers.

Debian or Ubuntu derived distributions

apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev followed by

pip install cryptography

Red Hat derived distributions

yum install gcc openssl-devel libffi-devel python-devel followed by

pip install cryptography

Note that as of version 3.4 cryptography now requires a Rust compiler at build time (not at runtime) so you will additionally need Rust >= 1.41.0. Check your distribution's rust or install it via rustup

Jigaboo

I've done this, but I still get this error: "Failed building wheel for cryptography" Followed by a lot of output (too much for a comment). – Croze

MacOSX response worked like a charm on MacOS Sierra 10.12. I have upgraded my pip to the most recent version at this time, 9.0.1. – Irresolution

Upgrade to the latest pip (8.1.2 as of June 2016) and just pip install cryptography works ! – Lines

I had to manually update my pip which is ages old, then the OSX solution works like a charm. (pip 9.0.1, MacOS Sierra) – Null

pip can upgrade itself with (sudo) pip install --upgrade pip – Tiebold

Works perfectly for the Red Hat derived distributions ! Thanks Paul – Stanstance

On Fedora installing with --user flag didn't work. Had to install as root to bypass the error. – Burg

does not work on my windows10, getting build error cannot open include file: 'openssl/opensslv.h' – Danielladanielle

Thx for shipping statically linked wheels, this makes life much easier ! – Pangolin

Unable to install cryptography on windows even after having all the latest versions. – Begat

on Ubuntu 16.04 with python 3.5 , I updated pip and was able to install cryptography-2.0.2-cp35-cp35m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl – Verein

In 2021, I had to add the Cargo at the end sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev cargo following the documentation in their website to get it to work cryptography.io/en/latest/installation.html – Ash

I had to do apk add libffi-dev openssl-dev rust cargo to get a pip install cryptography to work for me on Alpine Linux – Liturgist

I'm on raspbian (bullseye) on a raspberry pi 4b which as far as I can tell is a) aarch64 and b) glibc-based but I'm getting errors as pip/poetry try to build cryptography. Really don't wanna go through the build for that on a puny rpi cpu! – Shend

Answer 3

For those of you running OS X, here is what worked for me:

brew install openssl
env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"
pip install cryptography

(Running 10.9 Mavericks)

You may also want to try merging the flags and pip commands to the following per the comment below:

brew install openssl
env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" pip install cryptography

Barsky

CFLAGS="-I/usr/include" pip install cryptography from reaperhulk worked for me on Mavericks. – Etheridge

This command in the answer is not correct: the second and third line must be merged (use a backslash). Then it works perfectly, just tested on El Capitan. This comment above is also not correct. The other settings in the answer are necessary, or you will get later complaints. – Burkhard

As always @nathancahill HEHE – Barsky

I had to use export not env, but otherwise works. – Gabby

$ ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" pip install cryptography worked for me on macOS 10.12 with Python3.7 (in a virtualenv) when needing cryptography in order to install ansible. – Case

Answer 4

This worked for me in El Capitan

brew install pkg-config libffi openssl
env LDFLAGS="-L$(brew --prefix openssl)/lib" CFLAGS="-I$(brew --prefix openssl)/include" pip install cryptography

You can also check the thread here : https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/issues/2350

Peshitta

This is the first one on this page (and many, many others..) that worked for me in Mojave 10.14.5, thanks. Also like that the environment variables are only active for the command rather than the session as elsewhere. – Inky

I find that I still need to do this in Big Sur as well, and these commands still work. – Ussery

Answer 5

This solved the problem for me (Ubuntu 16.04):

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev python3-dev

and then it was working like this:

pip install cryptography
pip install pyopenssl ndg-httpsclient pyasn1

Southard

Answer 6

Apparently on recent versions of OSX this may be caused by Apple shipping their own version of OpenSSL, which doesn't work with the cryptography library.

Recent versions of the cryptography library ship with their own native dependencies, but to get them you'll need to upgrade pip, and possibly also virtual env. So for me, the solution was:

pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall pip virtualenv

Gynecologist

the virtualenv reinstall did it for me, it was using an old version of pip which kept failing, thank you! – Ker

Still fails for me. OSX 10.11.3 El Capitan here. – Sunderance

Answer 7

I tried many solutions above, but only after the installation of the following lib I could install cryptography:

sudo apt install libssl1.0

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04, but it will work on Ubuntu 18.10 as well.

UPD: To solve this error on Ubuntu 20 I had to replace cryptography==1.9 with cryptography==2.1.1

Radiant

While this code may answer the question, providing additional context regarding how and/or why it solves the problem would improve the answer's long-term value. – Fico

This worked for me. Why did it work? What is the difference between that package, which installs libssl1.0-dev and libssl-dev? – Inky

I do not get why, but only this helped me too – Dang

Worked for me too. Though pip still gets a segmentation fault after announcing the successful install, but I think that is just a pip problem. – Pevzner

Answer 8

How I solved "Failed cleaning build dir for cryptography"
(I came here from google to result for this error.)

note: using a virtualenv

TL;DR:

my file /etc/apt/sources.list wasn't correctly configured for my debian 8.

Explanations:

I wanted to install paramiko. paramiko needs cryptography.

I got these errors: first with pip install cryptography:

(...)
  ----------------------------------------
  Failed cleaning build dir for cryptography
Failed to build cryptography
(...)
    ----------------------------------------
Command "/home/myuser/pyenvs/testo/bin/python -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-HXWKAO/cryptography/setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-WjqY6V-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/myuser/pyenvs/testo/include/site/python2.7/cryptography" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-HXWKAO/cryptography/

and then with sudo apt-get install build-essential :

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 build-essential : Depends: libc6-dev but it is not going to be installed > or
                            libc-dev
                   Depends: gcc (>= 4:4.4.3) but it is not going to be installed
                   Depends: g++ (>= 4:4.4.3) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

(Not exactly the same errors as OP but I'm here to help eventually)

Solving:

After testing almost every command from every posts I end up going on
https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList
and copy pasted my adequate config in the file /etc/apt/sources.list

then:

sudo aptitude update

and then

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev

and then

pip install cryptography

hth

Congresswoman

Solved my problem on ubuntu 16.04 server. Thanks – Rat

Answer 9

This worked for me (I'm using Ubuntu 14.04):

first install libffi-dev libssl-dev libpython2.7-dev:

sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libssl-dev libpython2.7-dev

then inside virtualenv:

pip install cryptography
pip install pyopenssl ndg-httpsclient pyasn1

Sources:

https://mcmap.net/q/101161/-pip-install-requests-security-on-a-virtualenv-fails-building-wheel-for-cryptography-and-cffi

https://mcmap.net/q/98225/-insecureplatformwarning-a-true-sslcontext-object-is-not-available-this-prevents-urllib3-from-configuring-ssl-appropriately-duplicate

Wanonah

Answer 10

Nick Woodham's answer didn't work on OSX 10.11 El Capitan for me, but this did.

brew install openssl
CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" pip install cryptography==0.8

Aphorism

This got closest to working for me but also failed.. El Capitan OSX 10.11.3 here. failed with error code 1 in /private/var/folders/d9/75cfznt17cjc124j3stq3qc40000gn/T/pip-build-Q_JjdE/cryptography/ – Sunderance

I had to use CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" pip install cryptography and it installed. I had to add LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" as well to get the library to load. Dean Christian Armada's comment seems to do the same thing but using brew generated variables instead of hard coding. – Helpmate

Answer 11

In case that you are dockerizing your python application, your Dockerfile needs to have something like:

FROM python:3.7-alpine

RUN apk add --update alpine-sdk && apk add libffi-dev openssl-dev

RUN pip install cryptography

Litmus

Solved my issue too. Thanks! – Senghor

Answer 12

If you are building a python package distribution in a .gitlab-ci.yml file in for GitLab CI that uses a gitlab runner deployed in an AWS EC2 machine

 - apk add --update alpine-sdk && \
 - apk add libffi-dev openssl-dev && \
 - apk --no-cache --update add build-base

Fazio

Cheers, worked great in an alpine based docker container! – Lawford

Answer 13

If you are using python3, you need to install python3-dev. This fixed my problem sudo apt-get install python3-dev.

Workable

Answer 14

I was having issues with installing cryptography==1.7.1 on Ubuntu 16.04 and none of the answers above helped. So, I upgraded the requirement to a compatible 1.8.2 and the setup was successful. Note that you would still need build essentials & other dependencies mentioned in the top (most upvoted) answer.

Jackass

Answer 15

I was having a problem running sudo pip install cryptography because it would not find ffi when trying to compile. (OSX - Yosemite)

I solved it by downloading libffi and setting up the env var.

$ brew install pkg-config libffi
$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/libffi/3.0.13/lib/pkgconfig/
$ pip install cryptography

Coraliecoraline

I was having issues pip installing bcrypt because cffi failed to install, but this fixed it for both cffi and bcrypt. Thank you! – Floribunda

This did not work for me on El Capitan. Also note the stray period at the end of "pip install cryptography." – Shaky

@Shaky Don't have el capitan so can't test that but removed the stray period thanks. – Coraliecoraline

@Shaky Check my answer bro for the El Capitan installation – Peshitta

Answer 16

I noticed the original poster was clearly using a windows installation... and the best answers above are all for other OSs... so here goes. This assumes you have installed Python 2.7 which is the most widely supported (though old) version.

1. Install the "Visual C++ Compiler for Python"
2. Open an Administrative command prompt window

3. Re-run pip install (package) e.g.

   cd C:\Python27\Scripts
   pip install cryptography  (or pycrypto, fabric, etc)
   

Fayfayal

Answer 17

This works on El Capitan with MacPorts:

$ sudo port install openssl
$ env LDFLAGS="-L/opt/local/lib" CFLAGS="-I/opt/local/include" pip install cryptography

Nerveless

Answer 18

Upgrading pip version solved the problem

pip install --upgrade pip (for mac/linux distros)

Unthoughtof

Answer 19

I encountered a similar issue recently. In my case the versions of cffi and cryptography written in requirements.txt weren't compatible (cffi==1.8.9 and cryptography==1.9). I solved updating cffi with the last available version.

Fpc

Answer 20

I actually ran into this same prob trying to install Scrapy which depends on cryptography being installed first. I'm on Win764-bit with Python 2.7 64-bit installed. @jsonm's answer eventually worked for me, but first I had to Copy C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\vcvarsx86_amd64.bat to the x86_amd64 subdir within that bin dir so the vcvarsall.bat would stop throwing an error saying it was missing the config. If you need to configure env vars for a different setup, be sure to copy to corresponding vcvars bat file to the corresponding subdir or the first command below might not work.

Then I ran the following from a commandline as per @jsonm's instructions (tweaked for my config)...

C:\> "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86_amd64 
C:\> set LIB=C:\OpenSSL-Win64\lib;%LIB% 
C:\> set INCLUDE=C:\OpenSSL-Win64\include;%INCLUDE% 
C:\> pip install cryptography

And it worked.

Imprecate

Answer 21

I had this error too. After continuing to get this error even after installing openSSL, I eventually tried installing from wheel files from https://pypi.python.org/pypi/cryptography/0.2.2#downloads. It worked!

Inigo

Answer 22

i downloaded paramiko full source code from pypi and did

python setup.py install

it worked flawlessly

all default pythondev / openssl /libffi packages are already present in rhel.

downloading rpms have rpm mismatch and more trouble

Awhile

Answer 23

I am having same problem:

pip install cryptography

.
.
.
Installing collected packages: cffi, cryptography
     Running setup.py install for cffi ... error

Then I install libffi-devel and problem is solved

yum install libffi-devel

Croup

Answer 24

Those two commands fixed it for me:

brew install openssl
brew link openssl --force

Source: https://github.com/phusion/passenger/issues/1630#issuecomment-147527656

Aerify

I highly recommend against doing brew link openssl --force on OS X. Instead, just upgrade your pip to the latest version and it will install a statically linked wheel for both cffi and cryptography without a problem. – Jigaboo

Answer 25

I resolved this by upgrading from cryptography 1.9 to 2.4.2

Cloud

Answer 26

Had same issue in Cygwin, this is what helped me

sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libjpeg8-dev zlib1g-dev

but instead of sudo apt-get install, I installed those packages via Cygwin Source of this code

Ablaut

Answer 27

Use conda instead

None of the proposed solutions worked for me on Raspbian 10 (buster) so I just installed it via conda and voila:

conda install -c anaconda cryptography

---

P.S. : I know that the question mentions pip but I see that OP is using a conda installation so I thought of sharing this solution anyway. Nevertheless, since this problem is apparently OS-specific, it's meaningful to remind one that conda is a cross-platform solution which may also install necessary binaries apart from python packages - with just an one-liner.

Verdaverdant

Answer 28

you have to upgrade your pip before running your installation

Percival

Please explain how to do that. – Payson

This solution worked for me, using python -m pip install -U pip. – Apocope

Answer 29

In Debian 11 (and probably most new Linux distros):

sudo apt install python3-cryptography

Af

Answer 30

update the version of pip with command likes:

• easy_install -U pip
• python-m pip install --upgrade pip

just choose one to update.

Begley

Answer 31

For Ubuntu users. Tried all the answers but none of them really worked. Dug through the documentation itself and there it is,

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev cargo

Definiens

Answer 32

Ran into this issue today. Not a single answer here solves the problem. I've run into this before with some other packages that require cryptography. Today I was trying to install the latest, which is 40.0.2. But I have a machine from less than a month ago where it worked just fine. I go to that machine, there is no rust compiler installed. What version of cryptography is installed? 40.0.1. So I run sudo pip install cryptography==40.0.1, and it works. No rust required.

It was the same problem a couple months ago with the other python package I was trying to use. The developer figured this out and released a new version forcing a specific cryptography version, but I hadn't realized it. It seems the cryptography devs don't test installs before releasing.

Cowans

Answer 33

python3.7 -m pip install <your package>

For me django-allauth was giving this error. I resolved it using

python3.7 -m pip install django-allauth

Fulmis