I’m having trouble installing OpenAI Gym on my Mac and keep getting wheel build errors.
I’ve been trying to install the full OpenAI Gym package but I keep running into issues with building wheels for atari-py and pachi-py. I know this is a common problem on macOS.
I already tried the usual fixes:
Running export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.11
Setting export SDKROOT=/path/to/Mac10.11SDK
However, even after using these export commands before the installation, the wheel build errors persist. The installation halts when attempting to build these packages.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’m curious about other potential solutions or if I might be overlooking something in my setup. Any help would be great!
I faced a similar situation when trying to set up a reinforcement learning project recently. The root of the issue with atari-py and pachi-py lies in their native dependencies, which can be challenging to compile on the latest macOS versions. What ultimately worked for me was to avoid the full installation of OpenAI Gym. Instead of using gym[all], I ran pip install gym to get the basic functionalities and subsequently included only the additional packages I needed, like gym[classic_control] or gym[box2d]. This approach helped me bypass the troublesome Atari dependencies altogether. If you really need to work with Atari environments, I’d recommend switching to conda for better handling of native compilations, or alternatively, consider using Docker with a Linux setup where those dependencies are more reliably supported.
skip those problematic packages entirely. I had the same headache and ended up using pip install 'gym[classic_control,box2d]' instead of fighting with atari stuff. if you absolutely need atari environments, gymnasium (the new maintained fork) handles dependencies way better than old gym.
Those wheel build errors happen because atari-py needs system dependencies to compile properly. I hit this same issue last year - installing cmake and swig through Homebrew fixed it for me. Run brew install cmake swig first, then try installing again. Also make sure you’ve got the latest wheel with pip install --upgrade wheel setuptools before installing gym. The export commands you mentioned help but won’t fix the real dependency problem. If you’re still stuck after installing those system dependencies, try using a virtual environment with Python 3.7 or 3.8 - newer Python versions sometimes don’t play nice with these older packages.
I encountered this issue as well and found that the Xcode Command Line Tools were likely the cause. The atari-py and pachi-py dependencies require specific compiler versions that may not be compatible with newer macOS updates. To resolve this, I reinstalled the command line tools by running xcode-select --install, then reset the selected tools with sudo xcode-select --reset. I also downgraded pip and setuptools to specific versions using pip install pip==20.3.4 setuptools==50.3.2. After taking these steps, the installation proceeded without errors. Ensure that the necessary export commands are run in the same terminal session as the installation process.
You’re on the right track with those exports, but the specific paths might be the problem. I ran into this exact issue setting up my ML environment last month. Skip the SDKROOT export and just run export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9 - let the system handle the SDK path automatically. Also clear pip’s cache with pip cache purge before trying again. Those cached failed builds mess with new attempts. Check if you’ve got multiple Python installations fighting each other too - I had system Python and Homebrew Python both installed, which broke compilation. Run which python and python --version to see if you’re actually using the Python you think you are.