python - easy_install stops working after distribute upgrade

Question

When trying to install a package easy_install asked me to upgrade distribute:

The required version of distribute (>=0.6.35) is not available,
and can't be installed while this script is running. Please
install a more recent version first, using
'easy_install -U distribute'.

This seemed to work fine:

$ easy_install -U distribute
Searching for distribute
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute/
Best match: distribute 0.7.3
Processing distribute-0.7.3-py2.7.egg
Removing distribute 0.6.28 from easy-install.pth file
Adding distribute 0.7.3 to easy-install.pth file

Using /xxx/software/lib/python2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.7.3-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for distribute
Finished processing dependencies for distribute

But now when I start easy_install I get this:

$ easy_install
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/xx/software/bin/easy_install", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('distribute', 'console_scripts', 'easy_install')()
  File "/xx/software/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-1.1.6-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 357, in load_entry_point
    return get_distribution(dist).load_entry_point(group, name)
  File "/xx/software/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-1.1.6-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 2393, in load_entry_point
    raise ImportError("Entry point %r not found" % ((group,name),))
ImportError: Entry point ('console_scripts', 'easy_install') not found

What happened? How do I fix this

Answer 1

Try updating your setup tools manually.

wget https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py
sudo python ez_setup.py --user

Answer 2

Following an answer on a different question about pip vs. easy_install, you can uninstall a package that was installed with easy_install using pip:

sudo pip uninstall distribute

This removed the offending version of distribute, and easy_install works again.

Answer 3

I had same problem, then i found that there is easy_install-2.7 and I can install packages properly.