Externally managed environment issue won't be bypassed

[imonkolina-ctrl]

Hi everyone,

I’m having a lot of trouble getting SpiderFoot installed on the latest Kali Linux, and I’d really appreciate some help. I’ve tried both a Kali install in VirtualBox and running it natively on Windows 11, but I keep hitting roadblocks in both avenues. When trying to use both recommended installation commands, I get this:

 × This environment is externally managed
 To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
install.
If you wish to install a non-Kali-packaged Python package,
create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
sure you have pypy3-venv installed.
If you wish to install a non-Kali-packaged Python application,
it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.

For more information, refer to the following:
* https://www.kali.org/docs/general-use/python3-external-packages/
* /usr/share/doc/python3.13/README.venv**

I tried working around it by installing pipx (I’m on version 1.7.1-1) and also by setting up a virtual environment, but that just led me to the next problem.

When I try to install it inside a virtual environment (venv), the process fails while building lxml, saying I need the libxml2 and libxslt development packages installed. See below

× Getting requirements to build wheel did not run successfully.
│ exit code: 1
╰─> [4 lines of output]
:67: UserWarning: pkg_resources is deprecated as an API. See https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html. The pkg_resources package is slated for removal as early as 2025-11-30. Refrain from using this package or pin to Setuptools<81.
Building lxml version 4.9.4.
Building without Cython.
Error: Please make sure the libxml2 and libxslt development packages are installed.
[end of output]**

I tried to install libxml2-dev and libxslt1-dev via apt, but I still get the same error.

The third solution I tried was to force it with --break-system-packages, but then I end up with a mess of dependency conflicts, so that doesn’t seem like a clean solution.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated—thanks in advance!