tensorflow: Failed to build on Mac OSX: "Could not find python binary"

I am trying to compile tensorflow from source but cannot build master. The build for the pip package fails with the following error message

ERROR: /Users/till/git/tensorflow/tensorflow/tensorboard/components/vz_sorting/BUILD:8:1: Compiling 2 TypeScript files failed: execrooter failed: error executing command 
  (cd /private/var/tmp/_bazel_till/3e885964b28c274cf7e8652af4ed1911/execroot/tensorflow && \
  exec env - \
  bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tensorboard/scripts/execrooter bazel-out/local-py3-opt/bin/tensorflow/tensorboard/components/vz_sorting/vz_sorting-tsc-execroot.json): com.google.devtools.build.lib.shell.BadExitStatusException: Process exited with status 1.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tensorboard/scripts/execrooter", line 168, in <module>
    Main()
  File "bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tensorboard/scripts/execrooter", line 148, in Main
    raise AssertionError('Could not find python binary: ' + PYTHON_BINARY)
AssertionError: Could not find python binary: python3

I am running Mac OSX 10.12.4, bazel 0.4.5, python 3.6.1 in a conda virtual environment, Apple LLVM version 8.1.0 (clang-802.0.42). This might be related to https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/2752.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Reactions: 4
Comments: 20 (13 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@justprotato

To test out bazel, you need to compile it. To compile a development version of Bazel, you need the latest released version of bazel, which can be compiled from source.

bazel build //src:bazel builds the Bazel binary using bazel from your PATH and the resulting binary can be found at bazel-bin/src/bazel. This is the recommended way of rebuilding Bazel once you have bootstrapped it.

Install a release version of Bazel
git clone the master branch of Bazel then checkout HEAD (https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/2140)
Run: bazel build //src:bazel in the directory where you have the master branch files.
The output files are in the src folder inside the bazel-bin folder.
Replace your bazel file (example: /usr/local/bin/bazel) with the one in the bazel-bin/src folder.

Then to install TensorFlow

Build the pip package (https://www.tensorflow.org/install/install_sources)
From the root of the TensorFlow directory run: ‘./tensorflow/tools/pip_package/build_pip_package.sh /tmp/tensorflow_pkg’
Run: ‘pip install /tmp/tensorflow_pkg/tensorflow-1.2.0rc2-cp36-cp36m-linux_x86_64.whl’

WorksWellWithOthers on Jun 14, 2017

I’m quite sure this is related to https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/2752. Until that fix percolates through the releases: I got the build to move on without tensorboard by deleting line https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/tools/pip_package/BUILD#L162, i. e.

"//tensorflow/tensorboard",

I also tried changing the 239 occurrences of PYTHON_?(BIN)(ARY)?_?(PATH)? ?= in 132 files, plus the other 196 occurrences in 108 files in /tmp/_bazel/, but bazel apparently checks hashes for the files it generates.

MatthiasWinkelmann on Jun 7, 2017