pip recommends that you do something isn't supported and breaks pip entirely

[richardwhiuk]

• Pip version: 8.1.1 / 10.0.1
• Python version: 2.7.12
• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04

Description:

pip, as shipped by Ubuntu 16.04, from python-pip, recommends that you upgrade pip. Doing so on Ubuntu 16.04 breaks pip completely.

What I've run:

$ docker run -it ubuntu:16.04
root@ef18de253a1f:/# sudo apt-get install python-pip --assume-yes
...
root@ef18de253a1f:/# pip freeze
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.

Ah right, pip is out of date and is recommending I upgrade. Let's do that:

root@ef18de253a1f:/# pip install --upgrade pip
Collecting pip
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/0f/74/ecd13431bcc456ed390b44c8a6e917c1820365cbebcb6a8974d1cd045ab4/pip-10.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.3MB)
    100% |################################| 1.3MB 1.2MB/s 
Installing collected packages: pip
  Found existing installation: pip 8.1.1
    Not uninstalling pip at /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages, outside environment /usr
Successfully installed pip-10.0.1
root@ef18de253a1f:/# pip --help
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pip", line 9, in <module>
    from pip import main
ImportError: cannot import name main

Oh dear, pip appears to be completely broken.

Using /usr/local/bin/pip does work, but is unexpected.

[benoit-pierre]

You need to make sure you're using the right launcher if you upgrade pip. See #5221, particularly #5221 (comment).

[pradyunsg]

Hey @richardwhiuk!

This issue is a duplicate of #5221. I hope the links @benoit-pierre posted are enough to help you resolve your issue. :)

[pfmoore]

I agree that the message here is misleading. It's unfortunate that vendors, when packaging pip for use in system packages, don't patch the message to describe the correct command to use to upgrade the system pip.

If anyone has any suggestions for how pip can mitigate this, they'd be much appreciated. The problem is, of course, that we can't fix the old version(s) of pip that vendors still distribute, so any fix in pip is unlikely to be useful until all the vendor distributions have been upgraded to pip 18.1 (or whatever version we put any fix in :-()

[dennishaehn]

same here.

[pradyunsg]

We're working on this in #5346, closing in favor of that issue.

[lock]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.