Error after upgrading pip: cannot import name 'main'

Question

Whenever I am trying to install any package using pip, I am getting this import error:

guru@guru-notebook:~$ pip3 install numpy
Traceback (most recent call l         


        

Answer 1

I use sudo apt remove python3-pip then pip works.

 ~ sudo pip install pip --upgrade
[sudo] password for sen: 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pip", line 9, in <module>
    from pip import main
ImportError: cannot import name 'main'
➜  ~ sudo apt remove python3-pip   
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libexpat1-dev libpython3-dev libpython3.5-dev python-pip-whl python3-dev python3-wheel
  python3.5-dev
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  python3-pip
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 569 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 215769 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python3-pip (8.1.1-2ubuntu0.4) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
➜  ~ pip

Usage:   
  pip <command> [options]

Answer 2

Recover with python3 -m pip install --user pip==9.0.1 (or the version that worked)

Answer 3

Check if pip has been cached on another path, to do so, call $ which pip and check that the path is different from the one prompted in the error, if that's the case run:

$ hash -r

When the cache is clear, pip will be working again. reference: http://cheng.logdown.com/posts/2015/06/14/-usr-bin-pip-no-such-file-or-directory

Answer 4

For what it's worth, I had the problem with pip (not pip2 or pip3):

$ pip -V
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pip", line 9, in <module>
    from pip import main
ImportError: cannot import name main

$ pip2 -V
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

$ pip3 -V
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (python 3.5)

Somehow (I can't remember how) I had python stuff installed in my ~/.local directory. After I removed the pip directory from there, pip started working again.

$ rm -rf /home/precor/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip
$ pip -V
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

Answer 5

You must have inadvertently upgraded your system pip (probably through something like sudo pip install pip --upgrade)

pip 10.x adjusts where its internals are situated. The pip3 command you're seeing is one provided by your package maintainer (presumably debian based here?) and is not a file managed by pip.

You can read more about this on pip's issue tracker

You'll probably want to not upgrade your system pip and instead use a virtualenv.

To recover the pip3 binary you'll need to sudo python3 -m pip uninstall pip && sudo apt install python3-pip --reinstall.

If you want to continue in "unsupported territory" (upgrading a system package outside of the system package manager), you can probably get away with python3 -m pip ... instead of pip3.

Answer 6

I also run into this problem when I wanted to upgrade system pip pip3 from 9.0.1 to 19.2.3.

After running pip3 install --upgrade pip, pip version becomes 19.2.3. But main() has been moved in pip._internal in the latest version, which leaves pip3 broken.

So in file /usr/bin/pip3, replace line 9: from pip import main with from pip._internal import main. The issue will be fixed, works the same for python2-pip. (Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 distribution)

According to @Vincent H.'s answer