How to install matplotlib on OS X?

The problem is that when the C extensions are compiled, required headers files aren't in the search path, and when they're being linked, shared libraries aren't in the search path either.

The following worked for me:

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/X11/lib"
export CFLAGS="-I/usr/X11/include -I/usr/X11/include/freetype2 -I/usr/X11/include/libpng12"
pip install matplotlib-1.0.1.tar.gz

The simple answer is: You need to have pkg-info installed or else setup.py won't be able to find installed libraries.

I followed this page's instructions. I got stuck at

pip install -e git+https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib#egg=matplotlib-dev

Then I did:

git clone https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git
cd matplotlib
python setup.py build
python setup.py install

Checked my installation by typing in terminal:

python
import matplotlib
print matplotlib.__version__
print matplotlib.__file__

I got version 1.1.0 (as of this writing) and path /usr/local/Cellar/...