DistributionNotFound error after upgrading pip

Question

In reading about virtualenv here I realized I didn\'t have pip 1.3+, so I ran pip install --upgrade pip and now when I run pip --version i get the

Answer 1

The brutal way:

Assuming you are using homebrew for Mac (because I see /usr/local/Cellar), I suggest to

• remove (or backup) /usr/local/lib/python2.7, and
• brew rm python && brew install python.

This will definitely install pip 1.3.3 alongside of python. Your distribute will also be 0.6.35.

The soft way:

From /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages just remove:

• easy-install.pth
• pip-1.2.1-py2.7.egg or other versions of pip you have.
• distribute-0.6.34-py2.7.egg or other versions

Then, brew rm python && brew install python. This will leave all your other bindings from brew and installed stuff intact. Python, pip and distribute will be replaced with up-to-date versions.

additionally:

Please check that you don't have a distribute or setuptools or pip located in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages. That dir is re-used by all python 2.7 versions (brewed or from OS X) and will interferre with the pip/distribute already installed by Homebrew.

Answer 2

There is no need to uninstall python and install it back. Get the latest distribute package installed and then update pip with it should do the trick.

wget https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py
sudo python ez_setup.py
sudo easy_install -U pip