brew install zlib-devel on Mac OS X Mavericks

Attempting to install the zlib-devel on mac os x mavericks with homebrew doesn't work:

brew install zlib-devel
Error: No available formula for zlib-devel 
Searching taps...

This install

brew install zlib

works fine though.

Just run in the command line:

xcode-select --install

In OS X 10.9+, the command line developer tools are now installed on demand. So after running this also zlib and zlib-devel should be available (no need for brew install zlib...)

For OS X Mojave

The reason is because Xcode Command Line tools no longer installs needed headers in /include. You have to run a separate command to install the needed headers.

As noted here - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_10_release_notes

> The command line tools will search the SDK for system headers by > default. However, some software may fail to build correctly against > the SDK and require macOS headers to be installed in the base system > under /usr/include. If you are the maintainer of such software, we > encourage you to update your project to work with the SDK or file a > bug report for issues that are preventing you from doing so. As a > workaround, an extra package is provided which will install the > headers to the base system. In a future release, this package will no > longer be provided. You can find this package at: > /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg > To make sure that you're using the intended version of the command > line tools, run xcode-select -s or xcode select -s > /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools after installing.

xcode-select --install doesn't solve this on Mojave for some reason.

Since this is the only library blocking, go to https://www.zlib.net and download source code. Select the "US (zlib.net)" hyperlink about halfway down the page for the tar.xz version.

Then find the download on your local machine and double click on the file. This will unzip the download and create a new folder in the same directly.

Then in Terminal:

• cd into the directory with the download
• then tar -xvf zlib-1.2.11.tar.xz (Note that zlib-1.2.11.tar.xz may change depending on the latest version you've downloaded. Just run whatever file you're just downloaded.)
• Change directories cd zlib-1.2.11
• ./configure
• make
• make install

After running

xcode-select --install

Make sure your export these variables for the compiler and the pkg-config to find zlib

For compilers to find zlib you may need to set:

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/zlib/include"

For pkg-config to find zlib you may need to set:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib/pkgconfig"

This is solved my issue with zlib

zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available

In OS X 10.15 Catalina you need to run xcrun --show-sdk-path to see where it is and than provide that path to compiler or do something like

export CPATH=`xcrun --show-sdk-path`/usr/include

that point directly to directory where zlib.h is placed or just

export CPATH=`xcrun --show-sdk-path`/usr

depending on what path is expected

Unfortunately none of the above methods worked for me So I did

brew reinstall python@2
pip install six

Hope it helps