Failed to install out of the box on Mac OS Mojave - install error.

[punkscience]

I was installing as per the Beeware / Briefcase tutorial instructions and the last step failed on Mac OS Mojave 10.14.6

Output:

(beewaretest) bash-3.2$ pipenv install pycairo
Installing pycairo…
Adding pycairo to Pipfile's [packages]…
✔ Installation Succeeded 
Pipfile.lock (209a16) out of date, updating to (a4663a)…
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies…
Locking [packages] dependencies…
✔ Success! 
Updated Pipfile.lock (209a16)!
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (209a16)…
An error occurred while installing pycairo==1.18.2 --hash=sha256:dcb853fd020729516e8828ad364084e752327d4cff8505d20b13504b32b16531! Will try again.
  🐍   ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ 34/34 — 00:00:05
Installing initially failed dependencies…
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:   File "/usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_2/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pipenv/core.py", line 1992, in do_install
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:       skip_lock=skip_lock,
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:   File "/usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_2/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pipenv/core.py", line 1253, in do_init
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:       pypi_mirror=pypi_mirror,
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:   File "/usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_2/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pipenv/core.py", line 859, in do_install_dependencies
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:       retry_list, procs, failed_deps_queue, requirements_dir, **install_kwargs
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:   File "/usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_2/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pipenv/core.py", line 763, in batch_install
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:       _cleanup_procs(procs, not blocking, failed_deps_queue, retry=retry)
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:   File "/usr/local/Cellar/pipenv/2018.11.26_2/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pipenv/core.py", line 681, in _cleanup_procs
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]:       raise exceptions.InstallError(c.dep.name, extra=err_lines)
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]: ['Collecting pycairo==1.18.2', '  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3c/1a/c0478ecab31baae50fda9956547788afbd0ca563adc52c9b03cab30f17eb/pycairo-1.18.2.tar.gz', 'Building wheels for collected packages: pycairo', '  Building wheel for pycairo (setup.py): started', "  Building wheel for pycairo (setup.py): finished with status 'error'", '  Running setup.py clean for pycairo', 'Failed to build pycairo', 'Installing collected packages: pycairo', '    Running setup.py install for pycairo: started', "    Running setup.py install for pycairo: finished with status 'error'"]
[pipenv.exceptions.InstallError]: ['ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:', '   command: /Users/darrylwright/.local/share/virtualenvs/beewaretest-cVXoSTHE/bin/python3.7 -u -c \'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = \'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\'; __file__=\'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\';f=getattr(tokenize, \'"\'"\'open\'"\'"\', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace(\'"\'"\'\\r\\n\'"\'"\', \'"\'"\'\\n\'"\'"\');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, \'"\'"\'exec\'"\'"\'))\' bdist_wheel -d /private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-wheel-_oqwphc7 --python-tag cp37', '       cwd: /private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/', '  Complete output (17 lines):', '  running bdist_wheel', '  running build', '  running build_py', '  creating build', '  creating build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7', '  creating build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '  copying cairo/__init__.py -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '  copying cairo/__init__.pyi -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '  copying cairo/py.typed -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '  warning: build_py: byte-compiling is disabled, skipping.', '  ', '  running build_ext', '  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', "  Package 'libffi', required by 'gobject-2.0', not found", "  Command '['pkg-config', '--print-errors', '--exists', 'cairo >= 1.13.1']' returned non-zero exit status 1.", '  ----------------------------------------', '  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pycairo', '    ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:', '     command: /Users/darrylwright/.local/share/virtualenvs/beewaretest-cVXoSTHE/bin/python3.7 -u -c \'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = \'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\'; __file__=\'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\';f=getattr(tokenize, \'"\'"\'open\'"\'"\', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace(\'"\'"\'\\r\\n\'"\'"\', \'"\'"\'\\n\'"\'"\');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, \'"\'"\'exec\'"\'"\'))\' install --record /private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-record-f0y007zy/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /Users/darrylwright/.local/share/virtualenvs/beewaretest-cVXoSTHE/bin/../include/site/python3.7/pycairo', '         cwd: /private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/', '    Complete output (17 lines):', '    running install', '    running build', '    running build_py', '    creating build', '    creating build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7', '    creating build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '    copying cairo/__init__.py -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '    copying cairo/__init__.pyi -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '    copying cairo/py.typed -> build/lib.macosx-10.14-x86_64-3.7/cairo', '    warning: build_py: byte-compiling is disabled, skipping.', '    ', '    running build_ext', '    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', "    Package 'libffi', required by 'gobject-2.0', not found", "    Command '['pkg-config', '--print-errors', '--exists', 'cairo >= 1.13.1']' returned non-zero exit status 1.", '    ----------------------------------------', 'ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: /Users/darrylwright/.local/share/virtualenvs/beewaretest-cVXoSTHE/bin/python3.7 -u -c \'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = \'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\'; __file__=\'"\'"\'/private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-install-zbmzalmi/pycairo/setup.py\'"\'"\';f=getattr(tokenize, \'"\'"\'open\'"\'"\', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace(\'"\'"\'\\r\\n\'"\'"\', \'"\'"\'\\n\'"\'"\');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, \'"\'"\'exec\'"\'"\'))\' install --record /private/var/folders/7q/8x8c3sjx22ddl4_8q8lhw1440000gn/T/pip-record-f0y007zy/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /Users/darrylwright/.local/share/virtualenvs/beewaretest-cVXoSTHE/bin/../include/site/python3.7/pycairo Check the logs for full command output.']
ERROR: ERROR: Package installation failed...```

[punkscience]

I did some digging and this solution worked:

https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/2273#issuecomment-420412230

I don't really understand the 'why' but I thought I'd post this here since it may be worth understanding by someone in the project if something needs to be updated or changed.

[lazka]

yeah, the libffi homebrew package is broken. Ideas to improve this welcome.

[lazka]

libffi is still broken in homebrew to this day, but libffi seems no longer to be pulled in when requesting cairo, so this should be fixed now.