I had a similar problem on CentOS 6.3 and python 3.2.3

I solved it by:

Edit /Modules/Setup and uncomment the line:

zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz

change to directory /Modules/zlib:

./configure
make
sudo make install

then compiled my python3.2 source.

and was then able to test import zlib and it all worked fine 🙂

sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev

Even though python-dev is for python2.7 it will still bring in all the necessary dependencies.

You will then need to do:

./configure
make
sudo make install

To rebuild python3

I am using CentOS 6.6 and was recieving zlib errors. None of the other answers proposed here worked for me (including the fix for CentOS 6.3 of uncommenting a line in Modules/Setup). I have fixed it using the following commands.

yum groupinstall "Development tools"
yum install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel readline-devel tk-devel gdbm-devel db4-devel libpcap-devel xz-devel

Then configuring and installing python as follows:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath /usr/local/lib"
make && make altinstall

I can now import zlib in /usr/local/bin/python2.7 with no problems.

These instructions are slightly modified from an article found here.

I was having the same error while working on MAC

My MAC OS version

$ uname -v
Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0: Sun Aug 17 19:50:11 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.115.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64

python3.4 is used here

Issue(s)

1. zlib not available while using python3.4

   $ python3.4 get-pip.py
   Traceback (most recent call last):
   File “get-pip.py”, line 20204, in
   main()
   File “get-pip.py”, line 152, in main
   bootstrap(tmpdir=tmpdir)
   File “get-pip.py”, line 82, in bootstrap
   import pip
   zipimport.ZipImportError: can’t decompress data; zlib not available

2. Rebuilding Python fails

   ./configure –with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib

…
configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: –with-zlib-dir
…

Solution

1. Ensure zlib is installed .
   By default it will be installed in /usr/lib

   ls /usr/lib/libz.*

If not installed,
a. download and install
i)from zlib.net site
or
ii) from a git repo like the below

git clone https://github.com/madler/zlib.git 

or
iii). Use the zlib source in the python source directory
Modules/zlib

b. Install zlib

./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install 

2.Edit /Module/Setup by uncommenting the line below
“#zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz ”

3.Rebuild the Python3.4 from source again

cd ${PYTHON_SRC_CODE_DIR}  
./configure --prefix=${PYTHON_HOME_DIR}
make
sudo make install 

4.Confirm installation
Please note gzip depends on zlib.

nbr_repeation=100
f=open("some_file.txt","at")
for line in range(nbr_repeation): 
    print('[{}] This file will be compressed using python zlib/gzipmodule'.format(line),file=f)

f.close()
f=open("some_file.txt","rt")
import gzip
gz=gzip.open('some_file.gz', 'wt') 
for line in f : gz.write(line)

gz.close() # Like to be clean exit
f.close()  # Like a clean exit

"""confirm the creation of the compressed gzip files"""
import os
print([ (file,os.stat(file)[6],"bytes") for file in os.listdir(".") if file.startswith("some")])

The only solution that helped me with installing python 3.5.1 was to apt-get zlib1g-dev (and other packages such as python-setuptools and python-pip) and then rebuild python 3.5.1 from source.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-setuptools python-pip python-smbus
sudo apt-get install build-essential libncursesw5-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev openssl
cd ~
mkdir build
cd build
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.5.1/Python-3.5.1.tgz
tar -zxvf Python-3.5.1.tgz
cd Python-3.5.1
./configure
make
sudo make install

Taken from: https://github.com/MrYsLab/xideco/wiki/Installing-Python-3.5

As I undestand new build of python is made with inclusion of previously apt-getted related packages.
So when you browse the content of new Python-3.5.1/lib/site-packages there will be pip and setuptools. More importantly, they will be copied to any virtualenv you make using Python-3.5.1 AND this virtualenv will use THEM insted of system-default. This is very, very important to rememmber when installing new python version. Otherwise one might get into a black hole of errors such as:

• zlib not installed;
• “pip install …” executed from virtualenv that installs package to system-default python instead of virtualenv.

The easiest solution I found, is on python.org:

sudo apt-get build-dep python3.6

If that package is not available for your system, try reducing the minor version until you find a package that is available in your system’s package manager.

If you see something like this: E: You must put some ‘source’ URIs in your sources.list, Open Software & Updates and enable Source code.

I tried explaining details, on a blog post.

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

is what worked for me.

For anyone who’s trying to use a non-system / non-standard zlib (e.g. building your own from source), make sure to pass both CPPFLAGS (not CFLAGS!) and LDFLAGS to ./configure. For example, if your zlib is in /opt/zlib:

./configure CPPFLAGS='-I/opt/zlib/include' LDFLAGS='-L/opt/zlib/lib'
make
sudo make install

I ended up going down the rabbit hole trying to figure out why our Python wasn’t building with zlib support and found out that the CPython setup.py does not look at CFLAGS for include dirs, only CPPFLAGS:
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/setup.py#L562

For anyone having the same error on macOS Mojave, this is the easiest solution for installing/linking the header files:

open /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg

Then just build Python again as usual (also works with pyenv builds).

This is how I’ve built Python 3.7 on a CentOS 7 machine without devel libraries and installed it into user’s ~/.local without sudo. zlib, OpenSSL and readline modules are built.

Download Python source in .tgz format from https://www.python.org/downloads. Download zlib-devel-1.2.7-18.el7.x86_64.rpm, openssl-devel-1.0.2k-19.el7.x86_64.rpm, krb5-devel-1.15.1-50.el7.x86_64.rpm, libcom_err-devel-1.42.9-19.el7.x86_64.rpm, readline-devel-6.2-11.el7.x86_64.rpm from https://centos.pkgs.org for SSL, zlib and readline modules. Put all files into $DIST_PATH.

cd ~
DIST_PATH=<path to downloaded files>
for f in $DIST_PATH/*.rpm; do rpm2cpio $f | cpio -idmv; done
mkdir ~/usr/lib
# symlinks in ~/usr/lib64 are broken, so create new links to system libraries in ~/usr/lib and pass this folder to ./configure
for f in ~/usr/lib64/*.so; do ln -s /lib64/`readlink $f` ~/usr/lib/`basename $f`; done

tar -xzf $DIST_PATH/Python-3.7.13.tgz && cd Python-3.7.13
# That machine has devtoolset-7 with newer version GCC
scl enable devtoolset-7 bash
# curly brackets are important here, otherwise LDFLAGS is -LOME/usr/lib
./configure --enable-optimizations --prefix=$HOME/.local --with-openssl=$HOME/usr CPPFLAGS='-I${HOME}/usr/include' LDFLAGS='-L${HOME}/usr/lib'
make
# (!) altinstall is used, use python3.7 command to access newly built Python
make altinstall

rm -rf ~/usr

Links:

• Unpacking RPM packages
• krb5.h error
• com_err.h
• CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS