#as directed in the README.rst file
#doing a 'make altinstall' instead of install to install python3.7.2 along side other versions

....this is to be performed after './configure' 'make' and 'make test' commands.
please refer issue 36134 :titled :: (two issues could be related)
"test failure : test_re; recipe for target 'test' failed"

as there was also a make test failure prior to 'make altinstall'

-------terminal--------------

user@host $ make altinstall
....
#... everything goes well....
#... process ends with this traceback


.
.
.
.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/runpy.py", line 193, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", mod_spec)
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/ensurepip/__main__.py", line 5, in <module>
    sys.exit(ensurepip._main())
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 204, in _main
    default_pip=args.default_pip,
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 117, in _bootstrap
    return _run_pip(args + [p[0] for p in _PROJECTS], additional_paths)
  File "/home/apoos-maximus/packages/Python-3.7.2/Lib/ensurepip/__init__.py", line 27, in _run_pip
    import pip._internal
zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available
Makefile:1140: recipe for target 'altinstall' failed
make: *** [altinstall] Error 1

=========end==============

i do end up with a python 3.7 installation and still can't make sense of the failure.

fix your compilation with the zlib headers

zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available

not related to python itself.

This might help : https://devguide.python.org/setup/#install-dependencies

nosy: + matrixise
messages: + msg336753

resolution: rejected
stage: resolved