Pipx: No module named pip

[pawamoy]

Opening this ticket because I think it could help others. Also, not pipx's fault :+1:!

My distribution recently updated Python from 3.7.x to 3.8.0. It broke every single package I had installed with pipx somehow, and pipx itself.

I was left with these kind of errors:

$ guessit "some string"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pawamoy/.local/bin/guessit", line 5, in <module>
    from guessit.__main__ import main
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'guessit'
$ pipx install guessit
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pawamoy/.local/bin/pipx", line 6, in <module>
    from pipx.main import cli
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pipx'
$ pip install --user pipx
$ pipx install guessit
'guessit' already seems to be installed. Not modifying existing installation in '/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit'. Pass '--force' to force installation.
$ pipx install guessit --force
Installing to existing directory '/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit'
/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit/bin/python: No module named pip

Not removing existing venv /home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit because it was not created in this session
'/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit/bin/python -m pip install guessit -q' failed
$ guessit
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pawamoy/.local/bin/guessit", line 5, in <module>
    from guessit.__main__ import main
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'guessit'
$ pipx uninstall guessit
uninstalled guessit! ✨ 🌟 ✨
$ pipx install guessit
/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit/bin/python: No module named pip

'/home/pawamoy/.local/pipx/venvs/guessit/bin/python -m pip install guessit -q' failed

Not sure what exactly was happening behind the scenes as it's always hard to figure out with Python: there's the system versions, with their respective site-packages, there's pyenv and its own installed versions and shims, then there's potentially multiple pipx (shims?) and a script in ~/.local/bin (which one is the first in PATH?)... very convoluted but usually working.

Solution

Well, I simply had to explicitly uninstall pipx from the old system Python version with python3.7 -m pip uninstall pipx and then reinstall it with the new system Python version with python -m pip install --user pipx, and reinstall all pipx packages.

[QasimK]

I had the same problem, but was not able to use Python 3.7 to uninstall pipx.

I resolved this by uninstalling pipx, deleting ~/.local/pipx, and reinstalling pipx with the new version of Python.

[pawamoy]

Thanks, in fact I stumbled upon that problem again, and your solution worked.

[uolot]

Removing ~/.local/pipx and reinstalling pipx also worked for me! Thanks.

[metaflow]

Happened to me today too. Are you sure it's not an issue of pipx if it cannot survive python version upgrades?

[itsayellow]

Presently if you still have a functioning pipx but the pipx-installed apps are pointing to a non-existent python, you should be able to execute

pipx reinstall-all

To make things right.

pipx has improved its resilience in this regard since Nov. 2019.

[guihkx]

Arch Linux just updated its python package to v3.9 and pipx borked for me.

First, I tried listing installed packages:

$ pipx list
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/gui/.local/bin/pipx", line 6, in <module>
    from pipx.main import cli
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pipx'

Then, I reinstalled pipx:

$ pip install --user pipx
Collecting pipx
  Downloading pipx-0.15.6.0-py3-none-any.whl (43 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 43 kB 1.1 MB/s 
Collecting userpath>=1.4.1
  Downloading userpath-1.4.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (14 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: packaging>=20.0 in /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from pipx) (20.7)
Collecting argcomplete<2.0,>=1.9.4
  Downloading argcomplete-1.12.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (38 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: click in /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from userpath>=1.4.1->pipx) (7.1.2)
Requirement already satisfied: distro; platform_system == "Linux" in /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from userpath>=1.4.1->pipx) (1.5.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pyparsing>=2.0.2 in /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from packaging>=20.0->pipx) (2.4.7)
Installing collected packages: userpath, argcomplete, pipx
Successfully installed argcomplete-1.12.2 pipx-0.15.6.0 userpath-1.4.1

... Tried to list my packages again:

$ pipx list
venvs are in /home/gui/.local/pipx/venvs
apps are exposed on your $PATH at /home/gui/.local/bin
   package jsbeautifier has missing internal pipx metadata.
       It was likely installed using a pipx version before 0.15.0.0.
       Please uninstall and install this package, or reinstall-all to fix.
   package mitmproxy has missing internal pipx metadata.
       It was likely installed using a pipx version before 0.15.0.0.
       Please uninstall and install this package, or reinstall-all to fix.
   package youtube-dl has missing internal pipx metadata.
       It was likely installed using a pipx version before 0.15.0.0.
       Please uninstall and install this package, or reinstall-all to fix.

As suggested by pipx, I tried running pipx reinstall-all:

$ pipx reinstall-all
uninstalled jsbeautifier! ✨ 🌟 ✨
/home/gui/.local/pipx/venvs/jsbeautifier/bin/python: No module named pip

Error installing jsbeautifier.
uninstalled mitmproxy! ✨ 🌟 ✨
/home/gui/.local/pipx/venvs/mitmproxy/bin/python: No module named pip

Error installing mitmproxy.
uninstalled youtube-dl! ✨ 🌟 ✨
/home/gui/.local/pipx/venvs/youtube-dl/bin/python: No module named pip

Error installing youtube-dl.
The following package(s) failed to reinstall: jsbeautifier, mitmproxy, youtube-dl

Having that failed, I tried to manually install an app:

$ pipx install jsbeautifier
/home/gui/.local/pipx/venvs/jsbeautifier/bin/python: No module named pip

Error installing jsbeautifier.

Trying to list my apps again...:

$ pipx list
nothing has been installed with pipx 😴

Did I do something wrong? I haven't deleted my ~/.local/pipx folder yet, by the way, so pipx is still broken.

I'll wait for a response first in case this can help fix something.

[itsayellow]

@guihkx I don't think you did anything wrong. I believe the problem you are experiencing should be fixed in an upcoming release with #554 .

I think what happened was that after reinstalling pipx, the "shared libraries" that pipx uses internally to provide pip and other useful packages (~/.local/pipx/shared) were still stuck at the previous version and therefore unavailable to the new python / pipx. The default behavior in the next release will be to reinstall these shared libraries first before attempting to reinstall all the venvs.

Unfortunately, reinstall-all has uninstalled all of your venvs without being able to install any of them, so your ~/.local/pipx/venvs directory is probably empty. ☹️ Therefore if you want to start over by deleting ~/.local/pipx you will most likely not lose anything. Sorry.

[guihkx]

Don't worry, it's not an issue for me having to delete everything and install it again.

Thanks for the explanation too!

[kidpixo]

I'm having the same error as @guihkx .
@itsayellow is right , I believe the only folder we need to delete is ~/.local/pipx/shared/ .

I _think_ pipx will recreate them at the first (re)install, but I cannot prove it because I also ended up with reinstall-all uninstalling everything, but it is no big deal.