Setting up a virtualenv: No module named 'pip'

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21826859

Question

I have a fresh install of Python 3.3.4 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine. I've successfully installed the latest versions of Setuptools, Pip and Virtualenv globally:

python ez_setup.py
easy_install pip
pip install virtualenv

Now when I try to set up a virtualenv using virtualenv ENV I get the following stack trace:

New python executable in ENV\Scripts\python.exe
Installing setuptools, pip...
  Complete output from command [path redacted]\ENV\Scripts\python.exe -c "import sys, pip; sys...d\"] + sys.argv[1:]))" setuptools pip:
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'pip'
----------------------------------------
...Installing setuptools, pip...done.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python33\lib\runpy.py", line 160, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "C:\Python33\lib\runpy.py", line 73, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "C:\Python33\Scripts\virtualenv.exe\__main__.py", line 9, in <module>
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\virtualenv.py", line 824, in main
    symlink=options.symlink)
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\virtualenv.py", line 992, in create_environment
    install_wheel(to_install, py_executable, search_dirs)
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\virtualenv.py", line 960, in install_wheel
    'PIP_NO_INDEX': '1'
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\virtualenv.py", line 902, in call_subprocess
    % (cmd_desc, proc.returncode))
OSError: Command [path redacted]\ENV\Scripts\python.exe -c "import sys, pip; sys...d\"] + sys.argv[1:]))" setuptools pip failed with error code 1

I've never seen this error before, and the stack trace doesn't make any sense to me. I can successfully import pip from a Python shell. Can anyone help me fix this?

Update The env installs successfully when I supply the --system-site-packages flag.

Was it helpful?

Solution 3

Annoyingly, it looks like this might be a Python bug. https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/issues/564 references http://bugs.python.org/issue20621, which is still open but looks like it's going to be fixed in 3.3.5.

Dropping my Python installation back down to 3.3.3 fixed the issue.

OTHER TIPS

Useful workaround from the Python bug ticket for anybody else with this issue:

  • Run virtualenv venv --no-setuptools
  • Activate that virtualenv (venv\Scripts\activate)
  • Download and run get-pip.py to manually install pip & setuptools into this virtualenv
  • Continue as normal

Alternatively, downgrade to 3.3.3. This should be fixed properly in 3.3.5

In my case the simply running the below command resolved the issue; however, this command cause the pip to roll back to the previous version.

python -m ensurepip --default-pip

I know it says Update in bold at the bottom of your question, but my colleague and I both missed that you answered your own question.

So, in case anyone else might miss it, try the --system-site-packages flag. This worked for us:

virtualenv ENV --system-site-packages

I deactivated the virtual environment using deactivate command. And then I manually deleted the virtual environment folder and recreated it using the command python -m venv ./venv. This solved my problem. However, this will obviously delete all the packages and modules you installed as part of your virtual environment - but if pip is missing you probably haven't installed many.

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