Getting SSL backend conflict during pycurl setup
I’m running into trouble when trying to set up pycurl through pip in my virtual environment. The installation fails with this error message:
ImportError: pycurl: libcurl link-time ssl backend (openssl) is different from compile-time ssl backend (none/other)
From what I understand, this happens because there’s a mismatch between the SSL library that was used when pycurl was compiled and the one that’s actually available on my system at runtime.
I found some info suggesting that I need to configure the SSL backend during the setup process, but I’m not clear on how to do this when using pip for installation instead of building from source.
What’s the proper way to handle this SSL backend configuration when installing pycurl via pip? Any suggestions would be helpful.
had same issue last week - try uninstalling pycurl first then reinstall with pip install --global-option="--with-openssl" pycurl. if that dosnt work you might need to set the PYCURL_SSL_LIBRARY env var before installing. worked for me on macos at least
This error typically occurs when the precompiled pycurl wheel was built against a different SSL backend than what your system expects. The most reliable solution is to force pip to compile pycurl from source rather than using the prebuilt wheel. You can accomplish this by running pip install --no-binary :all: pycurl which will download the source code and compile it against your system’s actual SSL libraries. Before doing this, ensure you have the necessary development headers installed - on Ubuntu/Debian systems you would need libcurl4-openssl-dev and libssl-dev packages. This approach resolved the same issue for me when working with Python virtual environments where the system curl configuration differed from the wheel’s expectations.
oh man, i’ve been down this rabbit hole before! have you tried checking which ssl backend your system curl is actually using? sometimes the mismatch comes from having multiple curl versions floating around. what os are you working with btw? might help narrow down the fix