pygame installation issue in mac os

I have following issue of installing pygame package.

In file included from src/_numericsurfarray.c:23:
src/pygame.h:106:10: fatal error: 'SDL.h' file not found
#include <SDL.h>
         ^
1 error generated.
error: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

System information

  • Mac OS-10.9.2
  • python version- Python 2.7.5 :: Anaconda 1.6.1 (x86_64)

Any suggestion will be greatly appreciate ? Thanks.


Here (OSX Mavericks) I got able to install this way:

brew install sdl sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi
pip install https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame/get/default.tar.gz

("default" branch is on commit e3ae850 right now)

Source: https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame/issue/139/sdlh-not-found-even-thought-it-exists#comment-3822470

See this other StackOverflow question too: PyGame in a virtualenv on OS X with brew?


I had the same issue. I tried all versions of the answers to this question including variations of pip and pip3. Finally, the one that worked for me was:

sudo easy_install pygame

Note, however, that: (1) https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/easy_install.html says that easy_install is deprecated and recommends using pip. (2) pygame is installed in the old standard python 2.7 folder rather than in the python 3.8.3 that I just installed -- though I was able to use it successfully in VSCode.


My system is also OSX10.9.2,and I also meet you problem,and I'm still try some; Maybe this will be help for you:

there are some step:

1.Install [Quartz](https://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/);
2.Install Xcode-Command-Line,
  but you may cant install it by `xcode-select --install`,
  so you can down from 
  https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action ;
  I suggest you setup xcode,and this really solute my some problem;
3.`brew tap homebrew/headonly`
  `brew install smpeg --HEAD`
  `brew install sdl sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi`

4. `sudo pip install hg+http://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame`;
   if you clone this repo and try `python setup.py install`,you may meet some weird problem;

I have try install kivy which is base on pygame and I try lots of times,but just success install pygame one time.Then I uninstall it and also can't install it ;(

some refer:

http://jamesfriend.com.au/installing-pygame-python-mac-os-108-mountain-lion http://juliaelman.com/blog/2013/04/02/installing-pygame-on-osx-mountain-lion/

=======update

Now I have install pygmae sucess,remeber you should install xcode,not only xcode-command-line!