Error occurred when installing package pygame

This is not exactly a bug, it’s that there are no release wheels yet for 3.11, use pip install pygame --pre (--pre stands for pre release), it will install pygame 2.1.3.dev8 and you can use that, 2.1.3 is coming soon but I can’t tell for sure when.

Was able to duplicate this issue with:

• Python 3.11.0
• macOS Monterey 12.6
• Pygame 2.1.2
  I used pip3 install pygame and got a huge error message, as shown in the OP.

I do have a question, if there is no wheel made for Python3 3.11.0, is installing pygame 2.1.3.dev8 the only option? Is this release stable?

@arknaut Well, that’s the latest version of pygame that has wheels for Python 3.11 so it would be the most stable for that version of Python. Also, yeah, it should be stable enough on its own anyways, but again, it’s kind of temporary, I can’t tell for sure (or at all) but soon wheels for 2.1.3 should be released and they will be made for 3.11 too.

@Matiiss — Okay thanks! (just clarifying) pygame 2.1.3.dev8 has been released as a temporary version of pygame so that python 3.11.0 users can continue using pygame.

Uh, no, it’s more like 2.1.3.dev8 (it’s technically a pre-release btw) happens to have wheels for Python 3.11, it’s not specifically temporarily released for 3.11 because really 2.1.3 is kind of released already, it just doesn’t have wheels yet. But don’t take my word for it, however, I’m pretty sure it’s not something specifically done.

2.1.3dev8 is the only version with 3.11 wheels prebuilt. If you really want to use 2.1.2, you’ll have to build the wheels yourself. But 2.1.3dev8 is essentially the full 2.1.3 release, but in pre-release form. It wasn’t specifically released to target 3.11, but since 3.11 was coming out soon, compatibility with 3.11 was added to dev8 by starbuck5 and ankith

Are there any updates on this? Or an ETA for the new Pygame version?

Hello everyone. I observe the same problem on Armbian

pip install pygame
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting pygame
  Downloading pygame-2.1.2.tar.gz (10.1 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 10.1/10.1 MB 3.5 MB/s eta 0:00:00
  Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × python setup.py egg_info did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [30 lines of output]
      
      
      WARNING, No "Setup" File Exists, Running "buildconfig/config.py"
      Using UNIX configuration...
      
      /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
      /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
      /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "<string>", line 2, in <module>
        File "<pip-setuptools-caller>", line 34, in <module>
        File "/tmp/pip-install-m1yp62ur/pygame_44d4c02831ed4c49940d26d640b55b6a/setup.py", line 359, in <module>
          buildconfig.config.main(AUTO_CONFIG)
        File "/tmp/pip-install-m1yp62ur/pygame_44d4c02831ed4c49940d26d640b55b6a/buildconfig/config.py", line 225, in main
          deps = CFG.main(**kwds)
        File "/tmp/pip-install-m1yp62ur/pygame_44d4c02831ed4c49940d26d640b55b6a/buildconfig/config_unix.py", line 188, in main
          DependencyProg('SDL', 'SDL_CONFIG', 'sdl2-config', '2.0', ['sdl']),
        File "/tmp/pip-install-m1yp62ur/pygame_44d4c02831ed4c49940d26d640b55b6a/buildconfig/config_unix.py", line 39, in __init__
          self.ver = config[0].strip()
      IndexError: list index out of range
      
      Hunting dependencies...
      
      ---
      For help with compilation see:
          https://www.pygame.org/wiki/Compilation
      To contribute to pygame development see:
          https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
      ---
      
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.

@rammfire if you read a few messages above, Matiiss gave the solution

@rammfire if you read a few messages above, Matiiss gave the solution

Unfortunately this is not really a solution for other packages that depend on Pygame.

For instance, I am about to release a new version of Expyriment, which depends on Pygame, and I am currently mainly holding it back due to this issue. Would be great to have some idea on when proper Python 3.11 support is planned (roughly, like within the next few days, or will it still be months?).

@fladd The full release of 2.1.3 is almost out. I’m hoping it’ll be within a week or two at most, but that’s really up to the discretion of the lead maintainer right now

Cant wait for the full release ! 😄

Though pip install pygame --pre works on python 3.11 on my windows 11. I would like to use the release version of pygame. 😄

Looking forward to pygame-2.1.3.

C:UsersLiu.D.H>pip install pygame --pre
Collecting pygame
  Downloading pygame-2.1.3.dev8-cp311-cp311-win_amd64.whl (10.6 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 10.6/10.6 MB 4.8 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: pygame
Successfully installed pygame-2.1.3.dev8

C:UsersLiu.D.H>

C:UsersLiu.D.H>pip install pygame —pre

Can confirm this works. (Tested on Win10)

I would advocate for a point release that basically doesn’t change anything from the previous, but simply provides wheels for the new python version. A lot of beginners will get caught up on this while a new patch release is prepared. e.g., 2.1.3 simply ships additional 3.11 wheels, 2.1.4 gets moved to new patch release.

I would advocate for a point release that basically doesn’t change anything from the previous, but simply provides wheels for the new python version. A lot of beginners will get caught up on this while a new patch release is prepared. e.g., 2.1.3 simply ships additional 3.11 wheels, 2.1.4 gets moved to new patch release.

To the best of my knowledge, 2.1.3 is ready for release. Just waiting on the head maintainer to actually release it.

@fladd The full release of 2.1.3 is almost out. I’m hoping it’ll be within a week or two at most, but that’s really up to the discretion of the lead maintainer right now

Since it has been over a month now: Is there any news regarding the release?

Since it has been over a month now: Is there any news regarding the release?

To the best of my knowledge, the lead maintainer has not said anything to anyone in that time. Nobody else has the ability to release 2.1.3, so unfortunately we’re stuck waiting

@illume Python 3.11 has been out for a month and a half (and pygame’s main branch has been on 2.1.4dev1 for just as long). More and more people are starting to move to 3.11 and the fact that the only version of pygame with support for 3.11 requires knowledge of how to install a prerelease might detract users from continuing to use pygame. Is there something specific holding back the release? There are also other projects that are waiting for pygame 2.1.3 to fully release so they can update their dependencies.

I’ve tried and tried, but can’t even instal the pre-release.
RPi 4B, Bullseye (64-bit), Python3.11.

pi@rxtouchlite:~/pgtest $ pip install pygame —pre
Collecting pygame
Downloading pygame-2.1.3.dev8.tar.gz (12.1 MB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 12.1/12.1 MB 2.8 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Preparing metadata (setup.py) … error
error: subprocess-exited-with-error

× python setup.py egg_info did not run successfully.
│ exit code: 1
╰─> [33 lines of output]

  WARNING, No "Setup" File Exists, Running "buildconfig/config.py"
  Using UNIX configuration...
  
  /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
  /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
  /bin/sh: 1: sdl2-config: not found
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<string>", line 2, in <module>
    File "<pip-setuptools-caller>", line 34, in <module>
    File "/tmp/pip-install-9_sp3ju8/pygame_06121d1e121e4eafb99504b0ad01a83b/setup.py", line 399, in <module>
      buildconfig.config.main(AUTO_CONFIG)
    File "/tmp/pip-install-9_sp3ju8/pygame_06121d1e121e4eafb99504b0ad01a83b/buildconfig/config.py", line 231, in main
      deps = CFG.main(**kwds, auto_config=auto)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    File "/tmp/pip-install-9_sp3ju8/pygame_06121d1e121e4eafb99504b0ad01a83b/buildconfig/config_unix.py", line 189, in main
      DependencyProg('SDL', 'SDL_CONFIG', 'sdl2-config', '2.0', ['sdl']),
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    File "/tmp/pip-install-9_sp3ju8/pygame_06121d1e121e4eafb99504b0ad01a83b/buildconfig/config_unix.py", line 39, in __init__
      self.ver = config[0].strip()
                 ~~~~~~^^^
  IndexError: list index out of range
  
  Hunting dependencies...
  
  ---
  For help with compilation see:
      https://www.pygame.org/wiki/Compilation
  To contribute to pygame development see:
      https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
  ---
  
  [end of output]

note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.

Are you sure you are using the pip from python 3.11 there? Pis come with
multiple python versions. I thought you had to use pip3 on there

…

Are you sure you are using the pip from python 3.11 there? Pis come with multiple python versions. I thought you had to use pip3 on there
…

I think so. Both ‘pip’ and ‘pip3’ report version 22.3.1 from the same ‘penv global 3.11.0’.

Ah, I suspect it is because the pi is looking on the piwheels repository instead of PyPI and it won’t find any 3.11 wheels on piwheels because piwheels only builds wheels for a maximum of python 3.9.

If your pip is configured to use piwheels, but you want to use PyPI instead, you can remove or comment out the extra-index-url configuration in /etc/pip.conf

Otherwise you will have to learn to build pygame from source if you want to use 3.11 on a raspberry PI.

Had same error. Used temporary fix.

Please, please, please post this solution on the homepage of Pygame!

I’m an experienced coder but new to python and spent several hours thinking I had done something wrong.

Unfortunately, the only person with access to the pygame.org website is the same person that can fix this whole mess in the first place. But, they’ve been unresponsive so far.

But, they’ve been unresponsive so far.

Bummer. First installs always seem to go sideways.

Hello, everybody.

I followed what was written here, but when I entered the «import pygame» command, I got an error (Windows can not find import).

Who can help? Where is my mistake? Which direction in should I look for a solution to the problem?

Did you try to run import pygame directly in command prompt? You need to be in an actual Python shell to do that (which you can get to just by typing python

Did you try to run import pygame directly in command prompt? You need to be in an actual Python shell to do that (which you can get to just by typing python

Thank you! This little detail helped a lot.

I’m also trying to install from source at the moment and I’m getting the following error:

urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 503: Egress is over the account limit.

The pre-release wheel does work for me though.