When installing CLIP via pip on Python 3.10+ systems with setuptools …

[Aadi775]

…71+, the installation fails with: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'

Problem

When installing CLIP via pip on Python 3.10+ systems with setuptools 71+, the installation fails with:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'

pip creates an isolated build environment in a temporary directory when building packages from source. In this isolated environment, setuptools is installed fresh — and in newer versions (71+), pkg_resources is no longer automatically available as a top-level importable module within that subprocess context, even though setuptools itself is present.

The original setup.py imported pkg_resources at the module level and used pkg_resources.parse_requirements() to read requirements.txt. Since this code runs inside pip's isolated build subprocess, it fails before the wheel can even be built — making CLIP completely uninstallable from source on modern systems without workarounds.

Closes #532

What Changed

Before:

import pkg_resources

install_requires=[
    str(r)
    for r in pkg_resources.parse_requirements(
        open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "requirements.txt"))
    )
]

After:

install_requires=[
    stripped
    for line in open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "requirements.txt"))
    for stripped in [line.strip()]
    if stripped and not stripped.startswith("#")
],

• Removed the pkg_resources import entirely
• Replaced parse_requirements() with plain Python file I/O
• Strips each line before checking for blank/comment — so lines like " # comment" are correctly excluded (previous version missed these)
• Properly indented inside install_requires

Impact

• Fixes installation on any system running setuptools 71+
• Tested on Python 3.10.19, setuptools 82.0.1
• No behavior change for existing users
• Removes the only legacy pkg_resources dependency from setup.py
• Makes the build process more robust and future-proof

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes source installs on modern Python/setuptools by removing the pkg_resources dependency from setup.py and parsing requirements.txt using plain file I/O, avoiding failures in pip’s isolated build environment (setuptools 71+).

Changes:

• Remove reliance on pkg_resources.parse_requirements() by reading requirements.txt directly.
• Improve filtering of blank/comment lines by stripping before checking #.

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[Copilot]

open(..."requirements.txt") is used directly inside the list comprehension without a context manager, so the file handle may remain unclosed until GC. Consider reading the file with a with open(...) (and ideally an explicit encoding) before constructing install_requires to avoid resource warnings and improve robustness on Windows.

[Copilot]

The nested comprehension pattern for stripped in [line.strip()] is an uncommon idiom and makes install_requires harder to read/maintain. It would be clearer to strip once in a small helper (or pre-process the lines) rather than using a single-item list to bind an intermediate value.

[Aadi775]

Manual Workaround (until merged)

If you're hitting this error right now, you can manually install CLIP while this PR is pending:

1. Download and extract the zip:

wget "https://github.com/openai/CLIP/archive/d50d76daa670286dd6cacf3bcd80b5e4823fc8e1.zip" -O clip.zip
unzip -q clip.zip
cd CLIP-d50d76daa670286dd6cacf3bcd80b5e4823fc8e1

2. Replace setup.py with the fixed version above, then install:

pip install --no-build-isolation .

Tested on Python 3.10.19, setuptools 82.0.1, Arch Linux.