Pip error trying to get gphoto lib

Question

I am trying to install the gphoto2 library for Python on a Raspberry Pi B+ and I get this error:

pi@mazePi:~ $  pip install gphoto2

Collecting gphoto2
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/fd/d7/7660013e81138c73232a62010d3d8816028d8a025d2e62c326dc07e9bb5f/gphoto2-1.8.2.tar.gz (7.2MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 7.2MB 12kB/s 
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    ERROR: command "pkg-config --modversion libgphoto2" failed
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-build-kqalDU/gphoto2/setup.py", line 38, in <module>
        cmd, stderr=FNULL, universal_newlines=True).split('.')
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 219, in check_output
        raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd, output=output)
    subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['pkg-config', '--modversion', 'libgphoto2']' returned non-zero exit status 1

    ----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-kqalDU/gphoto2/

When running in verbose mode, I get:

Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip-build-lLGQBj/gphoto2/setup.py) egg_info for package gphoto2
    Running command python setup.py egg_info
    ERROR: command "pkg-config --modversion libgphoto2" failed
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-build-lLGQBj/gphoto2/setup.py", line 38, in <module>
        cmd, stderr=FNULL, universal_newlines=True).split('.')
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 219, in check_output
        raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd, output=output)
    subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['pkg-config', '--modversion', 'libgphoto2']' returned non-zero exit status 1
Cleaning up...
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-lLGQBj/gphoto2/
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 353, in run
    wb.build(autobuilding=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 749, in build
    self.requirement_set.prepare_files(self.finder)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 380, in prepare_files
    ignore_dependencies=self.ignore_dependencies))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 634, in _prepare_file
    abstract_dist.prep_for_dist()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 129, in prep_for_dist
    self.req_to_install.run_egg_info()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 439, in run_egg_info
    command_desc='python setup.py egg_info')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 725, in call_subprocess
    % (command_desc, proc.returncode, cwd))
InstallationError: Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-lLGQBj/gphoto2/

What is wrong?

Answer 1

The line:

Command '['pkg-config', '--modversion', 'libgphoto2']' returned non-zero exit status 1

indicates something went wrong when the script tried to run pkg-config --modversion libgphoto2 on your system. As apt list libgphoto2-dev indicates that the headers are not installed (it doesn't say [installed] in the output), pkg-config fails to run properly when trying to link to libgphoto2. To install the headers, run:

sudo apt install libgphoto2-dev

This should resolve the issue and you should be able to re-run Pip successfully.