Cannot import name '_gi'

Question

I\'m trying to add a repository to ppa with the add-apt-repository commands but the _gi module from Python is not found.

I did this command

Answer 1

These 2 steps may help you

$ cd /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi
$ sudo ln -s _gi.cpython-{36m,37m}-x86_64-linux-gnu.so

Answer 2

Thanks to a comment by Wilhelm, I found that the solution is:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/_gi.cpython-{36m,37m}-x86_64-linux-gnu.so

This worked for me with Python 3.7 on Ubuntu.

Answer 3

Follow the below steps to solve the issue.

(1) ls -al /usr/bin | grep python

(2) sudo gedit /usr/bin/add-apt-repository

Then change the !/usr/bin/python3 to

!/usr/bin/python3.6

Answer 4

Ubuntu does not like to switch its default interpreter away from python 3.7.

So switch it back to 3.6 by using

sudo update-alternatives --config python3

After that try to install the gi package:

sudo apt install python3-gi