Can't install Python's IMAPClient

Question

Trying to install IMAPClient using the command pip install IMAPClient. I'm on Windows, with Python 3.3.

It downloads fine, begins to install, then complains with ImportError: No module named 'response_parser'. I think that is an internal module for this library, so isn't something I can install separately.

I also tried to download the tarball manually, unpack it, and run python setup.py install, but get the same error.

This is a popular and stable library, so I realise I'm doing something wrong. I'm still a Python noob. What should I do?

Answer 1

From the home page:

Python versions 2.4 through 2.7 are currently supported. Python 3 support is in the works.

It would be nicer if they updated the setup file and/or the package metadata so it could immediately give you a clear error saying "Python 3 is not yet supported" or the like, instead of a mysterious failure from the middle of the setup process. But many projects don't bother to do that, preferring to put that energy into finishing the Python 3 port instead.

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However, if you look at the source page:

Python versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, and 3.3 are officially supported.

So, it looks like the Python 3 support is actually done, but just hasn't been pushed to PyPI yet.

Which means that, if you have mercurial installed, you should be able to do this:

pip-3.3 install hg+https://bitbucket.org/mjs0/imapclient

If you don't have mercurial (and don't want to install it), download the zipfile from the source page, unzip it, and pip-3.3 install . or python3.3 setup.py install from inside the source tree.

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If you plan on distributing Python 3 code that requires IMAPClient, you may want to scan the mailing list archives (or join the mailing list and ask) to find out when it will be updated on PyPI.