How to find out where the Python include directory is?

On my PC, the command is python-config --includes. Make sure you use the python-config that homebrew installed, not the default one.

My one-line solution is

python -c "from sysconfig import get_paths as gp; print(gp()['include'])"

If you would like to embed the code within a Unix shell (such as bash), you have to use escaped double quotations.

python -c "from sysconfig import get_paths as gp; print(gp()[\"include\"])"

There must be an easier way to do this from Python, I thought, and there is, in the standard library of course. Use get_paths from sysconfig :

from sysconfig import get_paths
from pprint import pprint

info = get_paths()  # a dictionary of key-paths

# pretty print it for now
pprint(info)
{'data': '/usr/local',
 'include': '/usr/local/include/python2.7',
 'platinclude': '/usr/local/include/python2.7',
 'platlib': '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
 'platstdlib': '/usr/lib/python2.7',
 'purelib': '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
 'scripts': '/usr/local/bin',
 'stdlib': '/usr/lib/python2.7'}

You could also use the -m switch with sysconfig to get the full output of all configuration values.

This should be OS/Python version agnostic, use it anywhere. :-)