Is it so hard to do an &#x27;apt-get install build-essential&#x27;? It seems a bit silly to stay on only system packages when a &#x27;apt-get install mysql-dev &amp;&amp; pip install pymysql&#x27; gets you a fresh up to date Python 3 (or 2) package in your virtualenv. Heck, if managing a bunch of virtualenvs is too much install virtualenv wrapper and just use &#x27;mkvirtualenv yourproject&#x27;.