pip: main not found - CentOS 7

[AbdealiLoKo]

• Pip version: 10.0.0
• Python version: 2.7.x
• Operating system: CentOS 7

Description:

When using the latest pip on an existing CentOS 7 we created a virtualenv using the system python and then did a pip install -U pip to get the latest pip version for wheel support and so on.

This has been working for the past few releases.

This gives an error now that the main function is not found in pip. WHen I do a:

import pip
pip.main

It still gives that main function is not found.

On checking the code, it does look like the main has been removed - https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/4db471fd8f25dd644fb7079b222cb1d54a83a465/src/pip/__init__.py

But this does not seem to have reflected in the pip binary file inside the virtualenv with the upgrade.

[AbdealiLoKo]

Seems to be very similar to #5221

But here the pip binary is not being created by CentOS - being created by easy_install:

# cat ./venv/bin/pip
#!/repo/venv/bin/python
# EASY-INSTALL-ENTRY-SCRIPT: 'pip==1.4.1','console_scripts','pip'
__requires__ = 'pip==1.4.1'
import re
import sys
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point

if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.argv[0] = re.sub(r'(-script\.pyw?|\.exe)?$', '', sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(
        load_entry_point('pip==1.4.1', 'console_scripts', 'pip')()
    )

Seems like if I create a new venv it all works fine though ...
I think there was some weird race condition when the release was happening.

[pfmoore]

pip 1.4.1 is very out of date. Modern pip does not use easy_install, and we wouldn't recommend its use. Again, the recommendation is to not upgrade your system packages except using vendor-supplied packages. I'd hope CentOS (Red Hat?) are on top of this, but either way I'm sure they'll have it sorted before they release a supported pip 10 package. In the meantime you can use virtualenvs if you need pip 10.

[AbdealiLoKo]

This was indeed for a virtualenv , not for the system.

But seems like creating the venv again fixed it

[vincent6767]

@AbdealiJK Can you elaborate more how do you fix it? I ran the pip3 install awscli --upgrade --user and got this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pip3", line 9, in
from pip import main
ImportError: cannot import name 'main'

[AbdealiLoKo]

@vincent6767 seems like you've updated the system pip which is not a good idea.

I had created a new virtualenv with virtualenv venv (for python2) and inside this venv I was able to upgrade pip correctly.

[vincent6767]

@AbdealiJK Thanks! I'm going to try your solution.

[lock]

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