Adafruit_BBIO not installing with Python 13.1

[sael17]

Hi! Recently I was tasked on upgrading a BeagleBone Black’s Python version from 3.9 to 3.13. I followed the steps found in this page: . Then, when I tried installing the Adafruit-BBIO API using pip install, it fails. Here is the final message I get: ERROR: Failed building wheels for some pyproject.toml based projects. I also noticed this message: I error: command 'usr/bin/gcc' failed with exit 1 I am using the following BeagleBone Build: am335x-debian-11-7-2023-08-05-4gb-emmc-iot-flasher I installed the latest OS updates and upgrades and tried the following options:

• Linked all pip options to pip3.13

(
sudo ln -sf $(which pip3.13) /usr/bin/pip
sudo ln -sf $(which pip3.13) /usr/bin/pip3
)

• pip3.13 install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

• Installing Missing System Dependencies

(sudo apt install build-essential python3.13-dev)

• Installing from Binary Wheel instead

pip3.13 install Adafruit_BBIO --prefer-binary

• Ignore pyproject.toml

(pip3.13 install Adafruit_BBIO --no-build-isolation)

• Ensured GCC is installed

(sudo apt install build-essential)

I was able to install something simple like pip3.13 install requests
and when the BeagleBone was using Python 3.9 I was able to install the Adafruit BBIO API without any issues. I am just wondering if it is possible that Adafruit BBIO is not supported by Python 3.13 or I did the Python 3.13 installation incorrectly. Any help or suggestions are more than welcome!

[sanjaay22]

Thanks for sharing the detailed breakdown of your setup and the steps you tried — it’s super helpful for troubleshooting!

You're correct in suspecting that Adafruit_BBIO may not yet support Python 3.13. The library has native C extensions that often need to be recompiled for each new major Python version, and it hasn't been actively maintained to keep pace with the latest Python releases.

A few suggestions:

• Try using Python 3.10 or 3.11 instead of 3.13. These versions are more likely to be compatible with the current state of Adafruit_BBIO.
• If you're set on using 3.13, consider cloning the Adafruit_BBIO repo and trying to build from source manually. You might need to patch setup.py and handle deprecated symbols in C extensions.
• As a workaround, switch to a GPIO library with broader support like gpiozero (though it may require tweaking pin factories for BeagleBone).