pip3 error - '_NamespacePath' object has no attribute 'sort'

Question

I tried to install a package through pip3, and I got this error. Every pip/pip3 command that I run gives me this error-

alexg@hitbox:~$ pip3 -V
Traceback (m         


        

Answer 1

I had the same problem using poetry.

Running

poetry run pip install --upgrade pip setuptools

instead of

pip install --upgrade pip setuptools

fixed the issue.

Answer 2

Upgrading setuptools worked for me:

pip3 install --upgrade setuptools

Answer 3

I tried most of the above suggested solutions but nothing worked as pip3 was totally non-functional, then I found this: https://deeptalk.lambdalabs.com/t/trying-to-uninstall-tensorflow-or-matplotlib-pip-package-throws-attributeerror--namespacepath-object-has-no-attribute-sort/310

I think this is probably the issue with most of us. I tried the suggested solution and pip3 is working again.

For me the matplotlib was not present in dist-packages but instead it was in site-packages, so the command that worked for me was:

sudo rm ~/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib-3.0.3-py3.5-nspkg.pth

ofcourse you need to change the above path based on your version and location of matplotlib.

Answer 4

This is for windows users, who installed WinPython We couldn't even run pip command. Uninstall and install of Anaconda 3 We faced similar error. Finally we removed folder "Python" which is inside C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\ and removed folder "conda" & "packages" which is inside C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\conda. Then it worked.

Answer 5

I met the same issue with python 3.5.2 and pip3 (9.0.1). And I fixed it by following this workaround: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/885#issuecomment-307696027

More specifically, I edited line #2121~2122 of this file: "sudo vim /usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py"

#orig_path.sort(key=position_in_sys_path)
#module.__path__[:] = [_normalize_cached(p) for p in orig_path]
orig_path_t = list(orig_path)
orig_path_t.sort(key=position_in_sys_path)
module.__path__[:] = [_normalize_cached(p) for p in orig_path_t]

Answer 6

This may sound weird, because I had this issue and I had tried everything mentioned in SO and GitHub issues. But then I installed pip with easyinstall and pip command is working. Maybe now there are 2 pip packages now. But error is gone.

easy_install pip