Install PIL with Jpeg support on Ubuntu Oneiric 64bit

http://jj.isgeek.net/2011/09/install-pil-with-jpeg-support-on-ubuntu-oneiric-64bits/

I am posting this because it took me ages to figure out how to solve this one.

I could not get PIL to compile with JPEG, Zlib or freetype support on my virtualenv. I am using Ubuntu Oneiric Beta1 on a Lenovo Thinkpad X220. That is a 64bit installation.

As read in every blog post out there, you first need to install the system libraries so PIL can find them.

$ sudo apt-get install libjpeg libjpeg-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev zlib1g-dev

After that, your regular pip install PIL should work under most situations. In my case I was still seeing this summary after the installation:

    ---------------------------------------------------------------
    *** TKINTER support not available
    --- JPEG support not available
    --- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support not available
    --- FREETYPE2 support not available
    *** LITTLECMS support not available
    ---------------------------------------------------------------

After a lot of googling around, I found this solution on Ubuntu forums.
It turns out that the APT installations put the libraries under /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnuand PIL will search for them in /usr/lib/. So you have to create symlinks for PIL to see them.

# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib
# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib
# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib

Now proceed and reinstal PiL, pip install -U PIL:

    ---------------------------------------------------------------
    *** TKINTER support not available
    --- JPEG support available
    --- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support available
    --- FREETYPE2 support available
    *** LITTLECMS support not available
    ---------------------------------------------------------------

tada  !

Update:
I just had this issue again on Ubuntu Precise, I found a solution here:
http://www.sandersnewmedia.com/why/2012/04/16/installing-pil-virtualenv-ubuntu-1204-precise-pangolin/

# ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/
# ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib/
# ln -s /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib/

Note the uname -i that prints the box’s arquitecture. This is a much more generic solution!

How to do it on Ubuntu Precise Pagolin 12.04