Pip: Pip3 freeze outputs Could not parse requirement: -BB

[Jendker]

• Pip version: 19.0.3
• Python version: 3.7.3
• Operating system: MacOS 10.14.4

I am trying to clean a bit my system-wide pip3 package to move all the development to the respective virtual environments.
I managed to remove all the pip3 packages, but right now I am getting such output for pip3 freeze:

➜  ~ pip3 freeze
Could not parse requirement: -BB

What can be the reason for such output?

[cjerdonek]

Marking as a bug because the error doesn’t provide enough info to let the user diagnose.

@Jendker What happens if you pass the verbose option -vvv?

[cjerdonek]

I posted PR #6538 for this.

[cjerdonek]

Could not parse requirement: -BB
What can be the reason for such output?

@Jendker Try looking in your site-packages directories for a directory with "BB" towards the beginning of the name. It is probably a corrupt dist-info directory of some kind.

[Jendker]

Thanks! I've found directories "~BB" and "~BB-0.1-py3.7.egg-info" under site-packages, I am not sure why they got created. Unfortunately I don't know the backgrounds on how to operate with pip and I am not sure how to solve this. Should I just remove the folders or is there something more to consider?

EDIT: I have found also this directory under: /Users/Jedrzej/Library/Caches/PyCharm2019.1/python_stubs/-1199943126/~BB
I am not sure if it is related

[cjerdonek]

Should I just remove the folders or is there something more to consider?

I think those directories exist because of a bug in an earlier version of pip (maybe in 19.0.1 / 19.0.2). You can think of them as temp directories that got created while installing / uninstalling something, but they were orphaned / not cleaned up correctly. The "~" character replaced some other character, so it might have been something like "ABB" or "BBB" originally. It's okay to delete them. If you're curious, you can also look inside to try and figure out what package they corresponded to.

[Jendker]

You are exactly right, they were a residue after TBB package. Thank you for your help!

[cjerdonek]

Great, and no prob!