## TL;DR

[aravindcz (commenter)]: If pip install chromadb dies building hnswlib wheels with C++ errors, check your RAM before reinstalling toolchains: the reporter was on a 1GB machine and the build kept failing there. Bumping the machine to 4GB fixed the install with no other changes.

## Steps

1. [aravindcz (commenter)]: If pip install chromadb dies building hnswlib wheels with C++ errors, check your RAM before reinstalling toolchains: the reporter was on a 1GB machine and the build kept failing there.

2. Bumping the machine to 4GB fixed the install with no other changes.

## When to use

You are seeing this: Reported in Chroma: Could not build wheels. Use this skill when you run into "Could not build wheels".

## When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

## Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

## Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.