Manim Installation Troubleshooting

Resolving pycairo Build Errors Due to Missing C Compiler on Ubuntu

Recently, I encountered an issue while installing Manim by running uv add manim in my terminal. The installation process failed with an error message indicating that pycairo could not be built because a C compiler was not found.


karchunt@kcserver:~/Desktop/docs$ uv add manim
Resolved 79 packages in 2.60s
      Built srt==3.5.3
  × Failed to build `pycairo==1.28.0`
  ├─▶ The build backend returned an error
  ╰─▶ Call to `mesonpy.build_wheel` failed (exit status: 1)
 
      [stdout]
      + meson setup /home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src
      /home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src/.mesonpy-bacl643f
      -Dbuildtype=release -Db_ndebug=if-release -Db_vscrt=md -Dwheel=true -Dtests=false
      --native-file=/home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src/.mesonpy-bacl643f/meson-python-native-file.ini
      The Meson build system
      Version: 1.8.4
      Source dir: /home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src
      Build dir: /home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src/.mesonpy-bacl643f
      Build type: native build
      Project name: pycairo
      Project version: 1.28.0
 
      ../meson.build:1:0: ERROR: Unknown compiler(s): [['cc'], ['gcc'], ['clang'], ['nvc'], ['pgcc'], ['icc'], ['icx']]
      The following exception(s) were encountered:
      Running `cc --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'cc'"
      Running `gcc --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'gcc'"
      Running `clang --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'clang'"
      Running `nvc --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'nvc'"
      Running `pgcc --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'pgcc'"
      Running `icc --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'icc'"
      Running `icx --version` gave "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'icx'"
 
      A full log can be found at
      /home/karchunt/.cache/uv/sdists-v9/pypi/pycairo/1.28.0/QB4rCO5e9gNgbsUODdHut/src/.mesonpy-bacl643f/meson-logs/meson-log.txt
 
      hint: This usually indicates a problem with the package or the build environment.
  help: If you want to add the package regardless of the failed resolution, provide the `--frozen` flag to skip locking and
        syncing.

The error means you’re missing a C compiler (like) gcc or clang on your system, which is required to build certain Python packages like pycairo (a dependency of Manim).

To resolve this issue on Ubuntu, you can install the necessary build tools by running the following command in your terminal:


sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential python3-dev libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev

Then try installing Manim again:


uv add manim

This should resolve the pycairo build error and allow you to successfully install Manim.