PIL build error on Snow Leopard

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<785f1942-6aec-4a5a-934a-8db50648b1ae at e22g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
 Xiao <xiao at xiao-yu.com> wrote:
> I haven't fully understood the nuances in the difference between
> Apple's system Python and MacPython. But I have just installed Python
> 2.6.4 from python.org. Now I'm trying to install a fresh downloaded
> PIL 1.1.6 but couldn't.
> python setup.py install gives:
> lipo: can't open input file: /var/tmp//ccfwpQd6.out (No such file or
> directory)
> Everything worked fine on Apple's Python 2.6.1

Building PIL on OS X is annoyingly non-trivial and this subject is one 
that comes up frequently on the Mac python list 
(http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.apple); you may want to search 
the archives or ask further questions there.  Typically, the problem is 
that PIL depends on some libraries that do not ship with OS X and you 
need to provide them in the proper architectures to satisfy the python 
build you are using.

The easiest approach is to use a complete solution from MacPorts since 
it includes PIL and python2.6 ports:

$ sudo port py26-pil

will pull in and build everything including a new python2.6.  If you'd 
rather not do that, you can use MacPorts or Fink to build the necessary 
libraries.  Another approach that should work (but I haven't tested on 
10.6) is to install the UnixImageIO and FreeType frameworks from here:

http://www.kyngchaos.com/software:frameworks

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org