How to install Python 3.7 with SSL?

Question

I have compiled and installed Python 3.7 on my Raspberry Pi, but SSL is not working.

These are the steps I took to install the new Python:

Prerequisites:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall python-dev python-setuptools python-pip python-smbus
$ sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev
$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libssl-dev openssl
$ sudo apt-get install libffi-dev

Download and extract Python 3.7:

$ cd /usr/src
$ sudo wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.0/Python-3.7.0.tgz
$ sudo sudo tar xzf Python-3.7.0.tgz

Configure and compile:

$ cd Python-3.7.0
$ sudo -s
# bash configure
# make altinstall
# exit

Make Python 3.7 the default:

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.4 1
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.7 2
$ sudo update-alternatives --config python3

It wasn't until I had already gone through this that I realized SSL was missing, when I went to install something with pip.

$ pip3 install --upgrade python-osc
pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.
Collecting python-osc
  Retrying (Retry(total=4, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError("Can't connect to HTTPS URL because the SSL module is not available.")': /packages/9c/2c/72e50535fa41b703ee891b6d06c661ad4d1c973992a7f09686ac8bb4cef6/python-osc-1.6.8.tar.gz
  (...)
Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='files.pythonhosted.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /packages/9c/2c/72e50535fa41b703ee891b6d06c661ad4d1c973992a7f09686ac8bb4cef6/python-osc-1.6.8.tar.gz (Caused by SSLError("Can't connect to HTTPS URL because the SSL module is not available."))

pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.
Could not fetch URL https://pypi.org/simple/pip/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='pypi.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/pip/ (Caused by SSLError("Can't connect to HTTPS URL because the SSL module is not available.")) - skipping

I saw in some other questions like this that perhaps libssl was not installed, but I did install libssl-dev with apt-get, as you see above.

I scrolled back to my configure output and saw this:

...
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking whether compiling and linking against OpenSSL works... yes
checking for X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_host in libssl... no
checking for --with-ssl-default-suites... python

That third line, checking for X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_host being no seems to be a bad indicator.

When running make, I see these errors related to SSL:

Python build finished successfully!
The necessary bits to build these optional modules were not found:
_ssl                  _uuid                                    
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

...

Could not build the ssl module!
Python requires an OpenSSL 1.0.2 or 1.1 compatible libssl with X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_host().
LibreSSL 2.6.4 and earlier do not provide the necessary APIs, https://github.com/libressl-portable/portable/issues/381

So, I thought I did all of the right things and had the most recent libssl installed, but Python is still not seeing it. How can I get Python 3.7 to build with SSL?

EDIT: I am on Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie), if that makes a difference. Would it help if I upgraded to Stretch?

UPDATE: Not sure why this is being marked as off-topic, because the problems I had installing Python 3.7 seem rather specific to Raspbian. I did upgrade the Raspberry Pi to Stretch, and then I was able to install Python 3.7 without these SSL errors. However, once Python 3.7 is installed on the Raspberry Pi, it breaks so many other things in Python 3 on the Pi, that it doesn't seem worth it. I ended up doing a clean install of Raspbian Stretch, and just using the included Python 3.5.3, which presented fewer problems.

@DmitryGrigoryev No, that's not what I'm trying to do. python-openssl just gives easier access to the OpenSSL library functions. The _ssl module still needs to be built for that to work. Thanks, though. — swizzlevixen, Aug 16 '18 at 17:40
"the problems I had installing Python 3.7 seem rather specific to Raspbian" -> Although you certainly can't be accused of excessive brevity, I don't see any supporting evidence for this; it looks more likely to be a Debian versioning problem, which is not specific to the Pi. You need to rule that more general context out in order to demonstrate it really is a Raspbian issue. Part of the reason we discouraging people from asking things of this "not pi specific" sort here is that you are much more likely to get better help faster elsewhere. — goldilocks, Aug 27 '18 at 22:33
Yes, this is a Debian versioning issue. Debian 8 Jessie does not provide the Python 3.7 required version of libssl in order to compile with SSL support. If you want to install Python 3.7 on Jessie with SSL, you need to compile a local version of openssl first and link to that when compiling Python itself. See this answer. Stretch is fine in that regard. — Rafa Viotti, Oct 17 '18 at 19:45
FWIW, I came to this page because of the title and I'm seeing exactly the same error. If I were had enough rep on the RPi SE, I'd vote to re-open. Or perhaps @Rafa could re-post his comment as a solution. — fearless_fool, Feb 25 '19 at 04:04
I can't answer since this thread is closed, and initiating a vote to reopen might be too much. I'd suggest @bob to create a TL; DR section above to help people know this is a Jessie issue without having to go through the entire question and its comments. — Rafa Viotti, Feb 25 '19 at 22:12

How to install Python 3.7 with SSL?

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