I’m deploying a Django app to a dev server and am hitting this error when I run pip install -r requirements.txt:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/var/www/mydir/virtualenvs/dev/bin/pip", line 5, in <module>
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
ImportError: No module named pkg_resources
pkg_resources appears to be distributed with setuptools. Initially I thought this might not be installed to the Python in the virtualenv, so I installed setuptools 2.6 (same version as Python) to the Python site-packages in the virtualenv with the following command:
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg --install-dir /var/www/mydir/virtualenvs/dev/lib/python2.6/site-packages
EDIT: This only happens inside the virtualenv. If I open a console outside the virtualenv then pkg_resources is present, but I am still getting the same error.
Any ideas as to why pkg_resources is not on the path?
3
35 Answers
July 2018 Update
Most people should now use pip install setuptools (possibly with sudo).
Some may need to (re)install the python-setuptools package via their package manager (apt-get install, yum install, etc.).
This issue can be highly dependent on your OS and dev environment. See the legacy/other answers below if the above isn’t working for you.
Explanation
This error message is caused by a missing/broken Python setuptools package. Per Matt M.’s comment and setuptools issue #581, the bootstrap script referred to below is no longer the recommended installation method.
The bootstrap script instructions will remain below, in case it’s still helpful to anyone.
Legacy Answer
I encountered the same ImportError today while trying to use pip. Somehow the setuptools package had been deleted in my Python environment.
To fix the issue, run the setup script for setuptools:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | python
(or if you don’t have wget installed (e.g. OS X), try
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py | python
possibly with sudo prepended.)
If you have any version of distribute, or any setuptools below 0.6, you will have to uninstall it first.*
See Installation Instructions for further details.
* If you already have a working distribute, upgrading it to the “compatibility wrapper” that switches you over to setuptools is easier. But if things are already broken, don’t try that.
23
Piping curl to a local command always scares me, but this works great. 🙂 I had run
sudo pythonthough YMMV.Under Cygwin I had to install the python-setuptools package. This got easy_install working again, which had suffered the same problem. Then I used
easy_install pipto get pip working again. My problem arose from Cygwin upgrading Python from 2.6 to 2.7 behind my back while installing something unrelated.This URL didn’t work for me but this one did: peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
@Cerin: It would be more helpful for everybody if you say what happened when you tried. And did you use
sudo, as @Nik noted above?
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python-pkg-resources
fixed it for me in Debian. Seems like uninstalling some .deb packages (twisted set in my case) has broken the path python uses to find packages
2
I’m using Python 3 so I had to run sudo apt-get install –reinstall python3-pkg-resources and that fixed it. Thank you!
I have seen this error while trying to install rhodecode to a virtualenv on ubuntu 13.10. For me the solution was to run
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install --upgrade distribute
before I run easy_install rhodecode.
4
pip install --upgrade setuptoolsalone did the trick for me.– ryantucki needed
pip install --upgrade setuptools --user– dfrankowI can’t run
pip install --upgrade setuptoolsdue to the same error:No module named pkg_resourcespip install --upgrade distributedid the job when using Python 3’s venv module. Python 2’s virtualenv supported--distributeflag, but one has to installdistributeon environments created byvenv.– Nirmal
It also happened to me. I think the problem will happen if the requirements.txt contains a “distribute” entry while the virtualenv uses setuptools. Pip will try to patch setuptools to make room for distribute, but unfortunately it will fail half way.
The easy solution is delete your current virtualenv then make a new virtualenv with –distribute argument.
An example if using virtualenvwrapper:
$ deactivate
$ rmvirtualenv yourenv
$ mkvirtualenv yourenv --distribute
$ workon yourenv
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
2
In CentOS 6 installing the package python-setuptools fixed it.
yum install python-setuptools
4
This works in Debian if when you replace “yum” with “sudo apt-get”. Also:
sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools– gridtrakThis is the one that did it for me.
I had this problem on CentOS 7, and python-setuptools was already installed, but
sudo yum reinstall python-setuptoolsfixed it.
After trying several of these answers, then reaching out to a colleague, what worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 was:
pip install --force-reinstall -U setuptools
pip install --force-reinstall -U pip
In my case, it was only an old version of pillow 3.1.1 that was having trouble (pillow 4.x worked fine), and that’s now resolved!
0
I had this error earlier and the highest rated answer gave me an error trying to download the ez_setup.py file. I found another source so you can run the command:
curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py | python
I found that I also had to use sudo to get it working, so you may need to run:
sudo curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py | sudo python
I’ve also created another location that the script can be downloaded from:
2
The “curl” command would not need sudo, so it could be:
curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py | sudo pythonthis answer saved me with “| sudo python” addition, because “| python” alone did not work! Thanks
I fixed the error with virtualenv by doing this:
Copied pkg_resources.py from
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools
to
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/
This may be a cheap workaround, but it worked for me.
.
If setup tools doesn’t exist, you can try installing system-site-packages by typing virtualenv --system-site-packages /DESTINATION DIRECTORY, changing the last part to be the directory you want to install to. pkg_rousources.py will be under that directory in lib/python2.7/site-packages
1
yes in some projects, this solutions is best (for me)
– nguyên
the simple resoluition is that you can use conda to upgrade setuptools or entire enviroment. (Specially for windows user.)
conda upgrade -c anaconda setuptools
if the setuptools is removed, you need to install setuptools again.
conda install -c anaconda setuptools
if these all methodes doesn’t work, you can upgrade conda environement. But I do not recommend that you need to reinstall and uninstall some packages because after that it will exacerbate the situation.
For me, this error was being caused because I had a subdirectory called “site”! I don’t know if this is a pip bug or not, but I started with:
/some/dir/requirements.txt
/some/dir/site/
pip install -r requirements.txt wouldn’t work, giving me the above error!
renaming the subfolder from “site” to “src” fixed the problem! Maybe pip is looking for “site-packages”? Crazy.
For me, it turned out to be a permissions problem on site-packages. Since it’s only my dev environment, I raised the permissions and everything is working again:
sudo chmod -R a+rwx /path/to/my/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/
I had this problem when I had activated my virtualenv as a different user than the one who created it. It seems to be a permission problem. I discovered this when I tried the answer by @cwc and saw this in the output:
Installing easy_install script to /path/env/bin
error: /path/env/bin/easy_install: Permission denied
Switching back to the user that created the virtualenv, then running the original pip install command went without problems. Hope this helps!
I had this problem today as well. I only got the problem inside the virtual env.
The solution for me was deactivating the virtual env, deleting and then uninstalling virtualenv with pip and reinstalling it. After that I created a new virtual env for my project, then pip worked fine both inside the virtual environment as in the normal environment.
Looks like they have moved away from bitbucket and are now on github (https://github.com/pypa/setuptools)
Command to run is:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | sudo python
1
File “/python/Python-3.5.1/Lib/urllib/request.py”, line 162, in urlopen return opener.open(url, data, timeout) File “/python/Python-3.5.1/Lib/urllib/request.py”, line 465, in open File “/python/Python-3.5.1/Lib/urllib/request.py”, line 488, in _open ‘unknown_open’, req) File “/python/Python-3.5.1/Lib/urllib/request.py”, line 443, in _call_chain result = func(*args) File “/python/Python-3.5.1/Lib/urllib/request.py”, line 1310, in unknown_open raise URLError(‘unknown url type: %s’ % type) urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error unknown url type: https>
If you are encountering this issue with an application installed via conda, the solution (as stated in this bug report) is simply to install setup-tools with:
conda install setuptools
On Windows, with python 3.7, this worked for me:
pip install --upgrade setuptools --user
--user installs packages in your home directory, which doesn’t require admin privileges.
Apparently you’re missing setuptools. Some virtualenv versions use distribute instead of setuptools by default. Use the --setuptools option when creating the virtualenv or set the VIRTUALENV_SETUPTOOLS=1 in your environment.
None of the posted answers worked for me, so I reinstalled pip and it worked!
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential
sudo easy_install pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
(reference: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2010/02/how-install-pip-ubuntu/)
3
Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/bin/easy_install”, line 5, in <module> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point ImportError: No module named ‘pkg_resources’
owner-Dimension-3000 owner # sudo easy_install pip Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/bin/easy_install”, line 5, in <module> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point ImportError: No module named ‘pkg_resources’ owner-Dimension-3000 owner # pip install –upgrade setuptools Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/bin/pip”, line 5, in <module> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point ImportError: No module named ‘pkg_resources’ owner-Dimension-3000 owner #
did you first remove installed pip version?
In my case, I had 2 python versions installed initially and later I had deleted the older one. So while creating the virtual environment
virtualenv venv
was referring to the uninstalled python
What worked for me
python3 -m virtualenv venv
Same is true when you are trying to use pip.
A lot of answers are recommending the following but if you read through the source of that script, you’ll realise it’s deprecated.
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | python
If your pip is also broken, this won’t work either.
pip install setuptools
I found I had to run the command from Ensure pip, setuptools, and wheel are up to date, to get pip working again.
python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
1
didn’t worked for me on Arch based Manjaro Linux
– Wlad
You can use the command
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3-pkg-resources
if you are using python3 , this was the case with me.
I came across this answer when I was trying to follow this guide for OSX. What worked for me was, after running python get-pip, I had to ALSO easy_install pip. That fixed the issue of not being able to run pip at all. I did have a bunch of old macport stuff installed. That may have conflicted.
On windows, I installed pip downloaded from http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ then encontered this problem.
So I should have installed setuptools(easy_install) first.
just reinstall your setuptools by :
$ sudo wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz#md5=7df2a529a074f613b509fb44feefefe74e
$ tar -zxvf setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz
$ cd setuptools-0.6c11/
$ sudo python setup.py build
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools
then everything will be fine.
I use CentOS 6.7, and my python was just upgrade from 2.6.6 to 2.7.11, after tried so many different answer, finally the following one does the job:
sudo yum install python-devel
Hope help someone in the same situation.
I ran into this problem after updating my Ubuntu build. It seems to have gone through and removed set up tools in all of my virtual environments.
To remedy this I reinstalled the virtual environment back into the target directory. This cleaned up missing setup tools and got things running again.
e.g.:
~/RepoDir/TestProject$ virtualenv TestEnvironmentDir
For me a good fix was to use --no-download option to virtualenv (VIRTUALENV_NO_DOWNLOAD=1 tox for tox.)
ImportError: No module named pkg_resources: the solution is to reinstall python pip using the following Command are under.
Step: 1 Login in root user.
sudo su root
Step: 2 Uninstall python-pip package if existing.
apt-get purge -y python-pip
Step: 3 Download files using wget command(File download in pwd )
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
Step: 4 Run python file.
python ./get-pip.py
Step: 5 Finaly exicute installation command.
apt-get install python-pip
Note: User must be root.
0
When installing nltk,same problem happens.Good question and helpful answer
pip uninstall -y setuptoolsand thenpip install setuptools==39.1.0worked for me on Anaconda on Windows 10.@Ryan worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 as well, thank you kind Sir!