How to install lxml on Ubuntu

Question

I'm having difficulty installing lxml with easy_install on Ubuntu 11.

When I type $ easy_install lxml I get:

Searching for lxml
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/lxml/
Reading http://codespeak.net/lxml
Best match: lxml 2.3
Downloading http://lxml.de/files/lxml-2.3.tgz
Processing lxml-2.3.tgz
Running lxml-2.3/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-7UdQOZ/lxml-2.3/egg-dist-tmp-GacQGy
Building lxml version 2.3.
Building without Cython.
ERROR: /bin/sh: xslt-config: not found

** make sure the development packages of libxml2 and libxslt are installed **

Using build configuration of libxslt 
In file included from src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:227:0:
src/lxml/etree_defs.h:9:31: fatal error: libxml/xmlversion.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.

It seems that libxslt or libxml2 is not installed. I've tried following the instructions at http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/libxslt/installation/installing_libxslt_on_ubuntu_linux.php and http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/libxml/installation/installing_libxml_on_ubuntu_linux.php with no success.

If I try wget ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/libxml2-sources-2.6.27.tar.gz I get

<successful connection info>
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD (1) /libxml2 ... done.
==> SIZE libxml2-sources-2.6.27.tar.gz ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR libxml2-sources-2.6.27.tar.gz ... 
No such file `libxml2-sources-2.6.27.tar.gz'.

If I try the other first, I'll get to ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libxslt --with-libxml-prefix=/usr/local/libxml2 and that will fail eventually with:

checking for libxml libraries >= 2.6.27... configure: error: Could not find libxml2 anywhere, check ftp://xmlsoft.org/.

I've tried both versions 2.6.27 and 2.6.29 of libxml2 with no difference.

Leaving no stone unturned, I have successfully done sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev, but this changes nothing.

Answer 1

Since you're on Ubuntu, don't bother with those source packages. Just install those development packages using apt-get.

apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev python-dev

If you're happy with a possibly older version of lxml altogether though, you could try

apt-get install python-lxml

and be done with it. :)