Can not install pyhdf on ubuntu 13.04

Question

When I try to install pyhdf, this error happens:

sudo easy_install -f pyhdf-0.8.3.tar.gz pyhdf
Searching for pyhdf
Best match: pyhdf 0.8.3
Processing pyhdf-0.8.3.tar.gz
Writing /tmp/easy_install-Q0FIMR/pyhdf-0.8.3/setup.cfg
Running pyhdf-0.8.3/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-Q0FIMR/pyhdf-0.8.3/egg-dist-tmp-wXq_6K
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c: In function ‘SWIG_Python_AddErrorMsg’:
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c:859:5: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments [-Wformat-security]
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c: At top level:
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c:3048:17: fatal error: hdf.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c: In function ‘SWIG_Python_AddErrorMsg’:
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c:859:5: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments [-Wformat-security]
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c: At top level:
pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c:3048:17: fatal error: hdf.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
error: Setup script exited with error: Command "x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -I/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/core/include -I/usr/include/python2.7 -c pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/pyhdf/hdfext_wrap.o" failed with exit status 1
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py:252: RuntimeWarning: Parent module 'numpy.distutils' not found while handling absolute import
  from numpy.distutils import log

Any idea what is wrong? Thank you.

Answer 1

You probably need to install libhdf4-dev package.

And instead of using sudo to install packages into your system, spend some time to read about virtualenv.