Pip: "pip install --upgrade --user pip" (still) doesn't work

[ali-faqeeh]

Environment

• pip version: 7.1.0
• Python version: 2.6
• OS: Linux (on a remote cluster)

Description
Here is what I get after using the above upgrade command for my user account (for example when trying "pip install spacy"):

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pip", line 9, in
load_entry_point('pip==7.1.0', 'console_scripts', 'pip')()
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 299, in load_entry_point
return get_distribution(dist).load_entry_point(group, name)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2229, in load_entry_point
return ep.load()
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 1953, in load
raise ImportError("%r has no %r attribute" % (entry,attr))
ImportError: has no 'main' attribute

Note
This is apparently the same problem as "https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5817".

[uranusjr]

My guess is you did not put ~/.local/bin in your PATH.

[chrahunt]

Like @uranusjr indicated - it looks like you have done a --user install of pip (since the module loaded is /u/afaqeeh/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip/init.pyc), but your shell is resolving pip to the global /usr/bin/pip script. These can be incompatible as mentioned in #5599. You should use the pip script from ~/.local/bin/pip directly or by adding it to your PATH environment variable.

Please let us know if that helps!

[ali-faqeeh]

@uranusjr @chrahunt Many thanks for your replies. I tried adding ~/.local/bin/pip to my PATH by PATH=~/.local/bin/pip:$PATH or by export PATH=~/.local/bin/pip:$PATH and then source ~/.bash_profile but none of them worked (I guess because for some reason the new PATH is not added to ~/.bash_profile).

[uranusjr]

@ali-faqeeh Don’t spell out pip in the PATH. You should only include up to the bin part.

[ali-faqeeh]

@uranusjr so it seems there was indeed a path problem and I think now it might have been fixed with PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH. At the moment it seems the local pip is working and the system pip is not. Now while a command like python3 -m pip install --user spacy works, for commands like pip install spacy and pip install --upgrade --user pip I get this new error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/u/afaqeeh/.local/bin/pip", line 7, in <module>
    from pip._internal.main import main
  File "/u/afaqeeh/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/main.py", line 13, in <module>
    from pip._internal.cli.autocompletion import autocomplete
  File "/u/afaqeeh/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/cli/autocompletion.py", line 11, in <module>
    from pip._internal.cli.main_parser import create_main_parser
  File "/u/afaqeeh/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/cli/main_parser.py", line 7, in <module>
    from pip._internal.cli import cmdoptions
  File "/u/afaqeeh/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip/_internal/cli/cmdoptions.py", line 105
    binary_only = FormatControl(set(), {':all:'})

[chrahunt]

You have multiple pips installed. When you run python3 -m pip it uses the pip installed to the Python 3 site-packages or user directory (you can see which by executing python3 -m pip -V). Your stack trace indicates that the latest pip (indicated by the file pip/_internal/main.py being in the stack, which was only in this most recent release) is also installed under Python 2.6 which has not been supported for some time. Python 2.6 does not recognize the newer syntax {':all:'} so it is understandably confused.

If you just want to use python3 as your main Python, and you want ~/.local/bin/pip to reference that one, then you can try python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip - it should overwrite the existing ~/.local/bin/pip which was installed with the original pip under Python 2.6. If it says something like "Requirement already satisfied", then you can also provide --ignore-installed to force it to reinstall and generate the pip script.

If you want to use pip with your Python 2.6, then check out the instructions here, where there is a link to a Python 2.6 compatible get-pip.py to help you get a compatible version set up. You can also find the script here if needed.

[ali-faqeeh]

@chrahunt Brilliant! As I'm only using python 3 tried python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip and now commands like pip install spacy work very well.
I should point out though that first I should update PATH every time I log in to the server using PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH (probably PATH is set to default at each new login).

[chrahunt]

Glad it helped! You can put export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH in ~/.profile and it should get picked up automatically on login depending on which shell you're using and what other files exist in your home folder. Check out the man page for your shell for more details.

Since this seems to be resolved I will close it, but please let us know if you have any other issues!