Poetry: Cannot install on Ubuntu 16.04, on both python 2 and 3

[costincaraivan]

> lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

I'm using the distro packages for Python and Pip:

 > python3 --version
 Python 3.5.2
 > pip3 --version
 pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (python 3.5)
 > python --version
 Python 2.7.12
 > pip --version
 pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

I know that pip complains about it not being the latest version, but I think the installation should still work, right?

By complains I mean this:

You are using pip version 8.1.1, however version 10.0.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.

Anyway:

 > curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdispater/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python

and

 > curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdispater/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python3

both end up with this:

Retrieving metadata

Installing version: 0.9.0
 - Getting dependencies
[... output truncated by me...]
Successfully built pyrsistent toml cachecontrol functools32 scandir pastel msgpack-python
Installing collected packages: typing, functools32, jsonschema, six, scandir, pathlib2, first, click, pip-tools, certifi, chardet, idna, urllib3, requests, pylev, pastel, cleo, pyrsistent, virtualenv, cachy, pyparsing, toml, msgpack-python, lockfile, cachecontrol, requests-toolbelt, pkginfo, poetry
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 209, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 335, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 732, in install
    **kwargs
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 837, in install
    self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root, prefix=prefix)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 1039, in move_wheel_files
    isolated=self.isolated,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 247, in move_wheel_files
    prefix=prefix,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/locations.py", line 153, in distutils_scheme
    i.finalize_options()
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/setuptools-20.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl/setuptools/command/install.py", line 38, in finalize_options
    orig.install.finalize_options(self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/distutils/command/install.py", line 289, in finalize_options
    raise DistutilsOptionError("can't combine user with prefix, "
DistutilsOptionError: can't combine user with prefix, exec_prefix/home, or install_(plat)base

😢

(Edit: pip3 install --user poetry worked. I'll leave the issue here and you can close it if you want. I'd say that the default installation instructions should work.)

[bertjwregeer]

This same error is happening with the Homebrew'ed version of Python on macOS: https://github.com/sdispater/poetry/issues/36

[BorePlusPlus]

I am experiencing the issue on ubuntu 18.04

[ciarancourtney]

Anything that involves installing packages to system python will require root permission, which is one of the main reasons to avoid installing system packages i.e. sudo pip install my-package-with-buggy-deps

This is a common issue in python and the README should probably address it early on by either:

1. switching to root user and carry on from there
2. use sudo where needed

I usually prefer option 2, and from my usage this means:

# to install
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdispater/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | sudo python3.6

# to setup bash completion
poetry completions bash | sudo tee /etc/bash_completion.d/poetry.bash-completion > /dev/null

[cauebs]

I believe pip should _never_ be used with root permissions. The current installer is missing a --user flag, but there's already a PR open for that.

[ciarancourtney]

I wouldn't say _never_, its a perfectly valid use case for multi-user, system package installs, particularly if the package vendors its dependencies like poetry

[sdispater]

The Poetry documentation will never recommend installing with sudo since this is a bad practice most of the time. If one wants to install it this way they can and are free do to so.

Nonetheless, Poetry installation is still a pain point and is something that needs to be tackled before Poetry can reach version 1.0.

I want the installer to make Poetry self-sufficient and self-updatable without hitting permissions issues.

The only way to achieve that is to install it in the user directory. For instance, cargo for Rust is installed in the ~/.cargo directory.

[BorePlusPlus]

The only way to achieve that is to install it in the user directory. For instance, cargo for Rust is installed in the ~/.cargo directory.

In which case should it use base directories as specified by freedesktop?

[sdispater]

The new installer's behavior fixes this by adopting the behavior that I hinted at here: https://github.com/sdispater/poetry/issues/112#issuecomment-407459442