Cannot install rpaframework library due to two different versions of pillow library needed

[jean-philippevincent-dotcom]

Hello, I cannot install rpaframework library on my Windows laptop.

pip --no-cache-dir rpaframework

When installing dependencies, two different versions of pillow are requested => the first one is Collecting pillow<11.0.0,>=10.2.0 (from rpaframework), it is donwloaded and installed succesfully, then Collecting pillow<10.0.0,>=9.1.1 (from rpaframework), this one is downloaded successfully but installation fails. I assume this is due to a newer version of pillow already installed previously ?

Is it normal to have different versions of Pillow library requested during installation of rpaframework ?

[CodexEmpirium]

@jean-philippevincent-dotcom I was just struggling with this. Yes, it is because of a newer Pillow version already installed. You will need Python 3.11.9 for this to work. RPA Framework does not work with later versions of Python (for now).

The steps I followed:

1. Uninstall previous versions of Python (this will delete all packages you installed using pip, so make sure to pip freeze a list of all your current dependencies and packages (or pip list)
2. Install Python 3.11.9 from official Python website (no binary installers for later 3.11.x)
3. Upgrade to latest pip (optional but ok)
4. pip install rpaframework

At this point, you might get an error about robocorp-flet dependency "httpx", you can ignore it. I filed a bug about this just now. This should not affect your work if you need only the basic RPA Framework windows installation. (workaround: `pip install rpaframework-windows for barebones installation.)

[raivolink]

@jean-philippevincent-dotcom what versions are you using? Is it possible you already had some other versions installed? I could not replicate issue on Windows 11, using python 3.14 and rpaframework 31.1.0. I used uv to create simple project with clean environment.

RPA Framework does not work with later versions of Python (for now).

That is not correct, robocorp python template has been using 3.12.11 for quite some time.

[jean-philippevincent-dotcom]

@raivolink I'm using Windows 11 and Python 3.14.2

[raivolink]

I had no issues with 3.14.2 in clean environment as well. Pillow version installed in venv with rpaframework was 12.1.0.

[jean-philippevincent-dotcom]

I already have Pillow 11.3.0 installed.

When I try to install rpaframework, it tries to install Pillow twice :

Collecting pillow<11.0.0,>=10.2.0 (from rpaframework)
  Using cached pillow-10.4.0.tar.gz (46.6 MB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done

and later on :

Collecting rpaframework
  Using cached rpaframework-27.5.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.5.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.5.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.4.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.4.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.4.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.3.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.3.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.2.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
  Using cached rpaframework-27.2.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (32 kB)
Collecting pillow<10.0.0,>=9.1.1 (from rpaframework)
  Using cached Pillow-9.5.0.tar.gz (50.5 MB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error

  × Getting requirements to build wheel did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [24 lines of output]
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "C:\Users\mathi\Appdata\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\pyproject_hooks\_in_process\_in_process.py", line 389, in <module>      
          main()
          ~~~~^^
        File "C:\Users\mathi\Appdata\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\pyproject_hooks\_in_process\_in_process.py", line 373, in main
          json_out["return_val"] = hook(**hook_input["kwargs"])
                                   ~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "C:\Users\mathi\Appdata\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\pyproject_hooks\_in_process\_in_process.py", line 143, in get_requires_for_build_wheel
          return hook(config_settings)
        File "C:\Users\mathi\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-build-env-c6uj3ksi\overlay\Lib\site-packages\setuptools\build_meta.py", line 333, in get_requires_for_build_wheel      
          return self._get_build_requires(config_settings, requirements=[])
                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "C:\Users\mathi\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-build-env-c6uj3ksi\overlay\Lib\site-packages\setuptools\build_meta.py", line 301, in _get_build_requires
          self.run_setup()
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
        File "C:\Users\mathi\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-build-env-c6uj3ksi\overlay\Lib\site-packages\setuptools\build_meta.py", line 518, in run_setup
          super().run_setup(setup_script=setup_script)
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "C:\Users\mathi\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-build-env-c6uj3ksi\overlay\Lib\site-packages\setuptools\build_meta.py", line 317, in run_setup
          exec(code, locals())
          ~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "<string>", line 29, in <module>
        File "<string>", line 26, in get_version
      KeyError: '__version__'
      [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
ERROR: Failed to build 'pillow' when getting requirements to build wheel

[CodexEmpirium]

@jean-philippevincent-dotcom what versions are you using? Is it possible you already had some other versions installed? I could not replicate issue on Windows 11, using python 3.14 and rpaframework 31.1.0. I used uv to create simple project with clean environment.

RPA Framework does not work with later versions of Python (for now).

That is not correct, robocorp python template has been using 3.12.11 for quite some time.

I followed the installation instructions from RPA Framework's official website, and these are the issues I ran into. I'm simply reporting what I found. Maybe there is a workaround to getting RPA Framework to install using pip with python 3.12.11. If you find it, let me know.