problems installing M2Crypto on Mint

Question

I am trying to install M2Crypto for python on Mint 12. I have executed `python setup.py build, but the build fails, stating

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

the preceding 2 lines show that there may be a problem with Python.h:

SWIG/_m2crypto_wrap.c:126:20: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated

If anyone knows what needs to be done to fix this, please let me know.

EDIT

I have attempted to install python-dev, but I get the following error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 python-dev: Depends: python (= 2.6.6-2ubuntu1) but 2.7.2-7ubuntu2 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages

Answer 1

It looks that you miss the python-dev package which contains python.h

Answer 2

try following command

$sudo apt-get install python-m2crypto

Answer 3

Compiling on recent Debian, Ubuntu or derivatives like Mint gives an error:

ImportError: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/M2Crypto/__m2crypto.so: undefined symbol: SSLv2_method

Corresponding question and answer here.