Ruamel.yaml fails to update with a weird compiler error on HomeAssistant update

Hi guys,

So after an update notification I do my usual bit as stated in the docs.
I am running Home Assistant on Raspbian stretch so the instructions are pretty straight forward.

However since the last update I am getting a weird error when running the HA update regarding the ruamel.yaml module/wheel(?). I can see pip will try to install version 0.15.89 after which it will fail while building the wheel (whatever that may be; I am not familiar with the python lingo).

From what I can gather it seems a gcc job exits with the following error:
ext/_ruamel_yaml.c: In function ‘__pyx_pw_12_ruamel_yaml_8CEmitter_5dispose’:
ext/_ruamel_yaml.c:15855:1: internal compiler error: Illegal instruction

After which the whole update rolls back to where it came from.

Now I have searched and have found nothing regarding this particular error. Figuring this might be something specific to my deployment I tried to fsck my SD card (nothing weird seem to come back), clear the pip cache (not sure if that helped of was needed in the first place), and obviously rebooted several times.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on and how to fix this?

For anyone interested I just found a solution which was absolutely a shot in the dark.

I did a “sudo apt-get purge gcc” which seemed to be the fix! I have NO idea why this works.