Question: I tried installing python using the command pyenv install 3.8.11 Please let me know if you need more info. Thank you for looking. output:  BUILD FAILED (Ubuntu 20.04 using python-build 20180424)  Inspect or clean up the working tree at /tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441 Results logged to /tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441.log Last 10 log lines: File "/tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 206, in _main return _bootstrap( File "/tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 125, in _bootstrap return _run_pip(args + [p[0] for p in _PROJECTS], additional_paths) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 34, in _run_pip return subprocess.run([sys.executable, "-c", code], check=True).returncode File "/tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441/Python-3.8.11/Lib/subprocess.py", line 516, in run raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args, subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/tmp/python-build.20210821132713.23441/Python-3.8.11/python', '-c', '\nimport runpy\nimport sys\nsys.path = [\'/tmp/tmp7l0fqi9l/setuptools-56.0.0-py3-none-any.whl\', \'/tmp/tmp7l0fqi9l/pip-21.1.1-py3-none-any.whl\'] + sys.path\nsys.argv[1:] = [\'install\', \'--no-cache-dir\', \'--no-index\', \'--find-links\', \'/tmp/tmp7l0fqi9l\', \'--root\', \'/\', \'--upgrade\', \'setuptools\', \'pip\']\nrunpy.run_module("pip", run_name="__main__", alter_sys=True)\n']' returned non-zero exit status 1. make: *** [Makefile:1198: install] Error 1  log:   Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 6, in <module> File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/runpy.py", line 203, in run_module mod_name, mod_spec, code = _get_module_details(mod_name) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/runpy.py", line 144, in _get_module_details return _get_module_details(pkg_main_name, error) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/runpy.py", line 111, in _get_module_details __import__(pkg_name) File "<frozen zipimport>", line 241, in load_module File "<frozen zipimport>", line 709, in _get_module_code File "<frozen zipimport>", line 570, in _get_data zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available Traceback (most recent call last): File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/runpy.py", line 194, in _run_module_as_main return _run_code(code, main_globals, None, File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/runpy.py", line 87, in _run_code exec(code, run_globals) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__main__.py", line 5, in <module> sys.exit(ensurepip._main()) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 206, in _main return _bootstrap( File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 125, in _bootstrap return _run_pip(args + [p[0] for p in _PROJECTS], additional_paths) File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 34, in _run_pip return subprocess.run([sys.executable, "-c", code], check=True).returncode File "/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/Lib/subprocess.py", line 516, in run raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args, subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/tmp/python-build.20210821140419.301/Python-3.8.11/python', '-c', '\nimport runpy\nimport sys\nsys.path = [\'/tmp/tmp1imhbulh/setuptools-56.0.0-py3-none-any.whl\', \'/tmp/tmp1imhbulh/pip-21.1.1-py3-none-any.whl\'] + sys.path\nsys.argv[1:] = [\'install\', \'--no-cache-dir\', \'--no-index\', \'--find-links\', \'/tmp/tmp1imhbulh\', \'--root\', \'/\', \'--upgrade\', \'setuptools\', \'pip\']\nrunpy.run_module("pip", run_name="__main__", alter_sys=True)\n']' returned non-zero exit status 1. make: *** [Makefile:1198: install] Error 1 

Answer: pyenv requires some packages to build Python from source. For Ubuntu, from pyenv wiki: suggested build environment sudo apt-get install make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev \ libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm \ libncursesw5-dev xz-utils tk-dev libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev