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I am attempting to run some matplotlib tutorials on my Pi3 running Raspbian Stretch. I have installed matplotlib & numpy using pip3

When trying to run any of the tutorials I get an error ImportError: No module named 'cairocffi' and ImportError: Cairo backend requires that cairocffi or pycairo is installed.

I attempted to install cairocffi

Collecting cairocffi
  Using cached https://www.piwheels.hostedpi.com/simple/cairocffi/cairocffi-0.8.0-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting cffi>=1.1.0 (from cairocffi)
  Using cached cffi-1.11.2.tar.gz
Collecting pycparser (from cffi>=1.1.0->cairocffi)
  Using cached https://www.piwheels.hostedpi.com/simple/pycparser/pycparser-2.18-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Building wheels for collected packages: cffi
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for cffi: started
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for cffi: finished with status 'error'
–
  Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
  Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libffi.pc'
  to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
–
  running bdist_wheel
  running build
  running build_py
  creating build
  creating build/lib.linux-armv7l-3.5
  creating build/lib.linux-armv7l-3.5/cffi
–
  building '_cffi_backend' extension
  creating build/temp.linux-armv7l-3.5
  creating build/temp.linux-armv7l-3.5/c
  arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -pthread -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -g -fdebug-prefix-map=/build/python3.5-RUbMX3/python3.5-3.5.3=. -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fPIC -DUSE__THREAD -DHAVE_SYNC_SYNCHRONIZE -I/usr/include/ffi -I/usr/include/libffi -I/usr/include/python3.5m -c c/_cffi_backend.c -o build/temp.linux-armv7l-3.5/c/_cffi_backend.o
  c/_cffi_backend.c:15:17: fatal error: ffi.h: No such file or directory
   #include <ffi.h>
                   ^
  compilation terminated.
  error: command 'arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc' failed with exit status 1

  ----------------------------------------
  Running setup.py clean for cffi
Failed to build cffi
Installing collected packages: pycparser, cffi, cairocffi
  Running setup.py install for cffi: started
    Running setup.py install for cffi: finished with status 'error'
    Complete output from command /usr/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-3l0i4pgl/cffi/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-hlec49cb-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --user --prefix=:
    Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libffi.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable

The tutorials apparently run successfully on Windows and other machines, so I am assuming the problem is a Pi specific issue, and not just a python problem.

Can anyone point me in the right direction. I note /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libffi.so.6 is on the Pi.

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Try this: install libffi6 and libffi-dev using apt:

 sudo apt install libffi-dev libffi6

Then rerun the pip install of cairocffi:

pip3 install cairocffi

You may also need to install cffi (but I don't think so):

pip3 install cffi
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  • Thanks, this fixed the problem. I now get a graphics window. It doesn´t actually display the expected output and produces errorypeError: Couldn't find foreign struct converter for 'cairo.Context'`, but this is a new problem.
    – Milliways
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 3:16
  • @millways try this sudo apt-get install python-gi-cairo
    – Steve Robillard
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 3:43
  • Steve, again thanks for the hint. Did not work but sudo apt install python3-gi-cairo did. <rant>From a theoretical point Python seems good; I have even written a few programs BUT the documentation is non-existent or APPALLING, error messages cryptic! Who would produce a package which requires to compile code, BUT not indicate the need to install dev libraries?</rant> The end result is that whenever I have to produce a program which works, it is easier to write in c or c++ (or indeed ANY language with documentation). I will also give the author of the tutorial my opinion!
    – Milliways
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 4:36

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