Dependency errror while instlling on Pop!_OS 22.04

[pabloab]

On Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 22.04):

pipx install waypaper

Fatal error from pip prevented installation. Full pip output in file:
    /home/me/.local/pipx/logs/cmd_2025-05-09_21.33.15_pip_errors.log

pip seemed to fail to build package:
    PyGObject

Some possibly relevant errors from pip install:
    error: subprocess-exited-with-error
    ../cairo/meson.build:31:12: ERROR: Dependency "cairo" not found, tried pkgconfig
    error: metadata-generation-failed

Error installing waypaper.
cd: no such entry in dir stack

Installing python311-pycairo-devel with apt or pycairo with pip/pipx didn't work. But with pip:

pip install waypaper                                           
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting waypaper
  Downloading waypaper-2.5-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (5.7 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: PyGObject in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from waypaper) (3.42.1)
Requirement already satisfied: platformdirs in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from waypaper) (2.5.1)
Requirement already satisfied: Pillow in /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from waypaper) (10.1.0)
Requirement already satisfied: imageio in /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from waypaper) (2.31.4)
Requirement already satisfied: imageio-ffmpeg in /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from waypaper) (0.4.9)
Collecting screeninfo (from waypaper)
  Downloading screeninfo-0.8.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.9 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy in /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from imageio->waypaper) (1.25.2)
Requirement already satisfied: setuptools in /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from imageio-ffmpeg->waypaper) (76.0.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pycairo>=1.16.0 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from PyGObject->waypaper) (1.20.1)
Downloading waypaper-2.5-py3-none-any.whl (46 kB)
Downloading screeninfo-0.8.1-py3-none-any.whl (12 kB)
WARNING: Error parsing dependencies of flatbuffers: Invalid version: '1.12.1-git20200711.33e2d80-dfsg1-0.6'
WARNING: Error parsing dependencies of pdfminer-six: Invalid version: '-VERSION-'
Installing collected packages: screeninfo, waypaper
Successfully installed screeninfo-0.8.1 waypaper-2.5

But

$ waypaper
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/me/.local/bin/waypaper", line 5, in <module>
    from waypaper.__main__ import run
  File "/home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/waypaper/__main__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from waypaper.app import App
  File "/home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/waypaper/app.py", line 12, in <module>
    from waypaper.changer import change_wallpaper
  File "/home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/waypaper/changer.py", line 9, in <module>
    from waypaper.config import Config
  File "/home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/waypaper/config.py", line 7, in <module>
    from platformdirs import user_config_path, user_pictures_path, user_cache_path, user_state_path
ImportError: cannot import name 'user_pictures_path' from 'platformdirs' (/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/platformdirs/__init__.py)

[anufrievroman]

Very interesting, thank you for reporting!
I wonder why it is so different on different distros although pypi installations are supposed to be universal even on windows. Which version of Python do you have?

[anufrievroman]

From the logs it seems you may have python 3.10, while current version is 3.13. Not sure if that would resolve the issue but try updating python in your system, some packages might be sensitive to that.

[pabloab]

Indeed, Python 3.10.12, current stable that comes with the distro.

[anufrievroman]

Also the error indicates that platformdirs library cannot be imported. Although it should have been installed together with waypaper, you may try to ensure that it's installed pip install platformdirs

[anufrievroman]

I also noticed in your logs that some packages are installed at /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages while others at /home/me/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages, perhaps that's why python doesn't see platformdirs. Maybe it's because some packages left from other installations? A bit difficult to advise something for sure, except trying to:

1. Update python
2. Remove all the installed libraries related to waypaper (platformdirs, PyGObject, imageio, screeninfo)
3. Remove the pip and pipx installations of waypaper (pip uninstall waypaper)
4. Trying to install it with pip again. Possibly replacing systempackages as pip install waypaper --break-system-packages

[anufrievroman]

Actually, I tried to do all this on an Ubuntu based distro and could reproduce these errors, but couldn't install no matter what. So, stay tuned for updates...

[4fthawaiian]

I'm on ubuntu 25.04, and I was able to resolve the issue with a few more packages:

  sudo apt install libcairo2-dev libgirepository1.0-dev gcc libcairo2-dev pkg-config python3-dev gir1.2-gtk-4.0 girepository-tools gir1.2-girepository-2.0-dev libgirepository-2.0-dev