virtualenv doesn't install pip to ENV/bin

[xuchen]

The following error is what I have been struggling with:

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ which pip
/Users/xuchen/bin/pip

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ cat ~/bin/pip
#!/usr/local/bin/python    ---> Note the shebang here

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
import sys

from pip import main

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

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ virtualenv test
New python executable in test/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in test/bin/python
Please make sure you remove any previous custom paths from your /Users/xuchen/.pydistutils.cfg file.
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...done.

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ pip
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/xuchen/bin/pip", line 7, in <module>
    from pip import main
ImportError: No module named pip

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ ls test/bin/
activate  activate.csh  activate.fish  activate_this.py  python  python2  python2.7

xuchen@Xuchens-MacBook-Pro:/tmp$ head -n 1 ~/bin/pip
#!/private/tmp/test/bin/python2.7    ---> Note that shebang was changed

virtualenv changes the "shebang" of my pip file, and even after "deactivate", it doesn't change back, thus damaging my pip file. I couldn't find any pip installed under ENV/bin. This also breaks my tox testing procedure.

Update with versions: pip (7.0.1) and virtualenv (13.0.3)

[xuchen]

looks like the root of problem is here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24257803/distutilsoptionerror-must-supply-either-home-or-prefix-exec-prefix-not-both

But there's not an obvious solution...

[jgosmann]

It seems that virtualenv breaks when you have a ~/.pydistutils.cfg file which specifies an install prefix like

[install]
prefix=$HOME/bin

This can be a very hard problem to track down.

[xuchen]

any workaround? If I remove that file, then pip install won't work...

[jgosmann]

pip install should still work in the virtualenv, outside of the virtualenv you can try pip install --user

Despite the workaround, it would be nice if virtualenv would detect and warn about this issue or handle it properly.

[GreenGremlin]

It looks like brewed Python installs ~/.pydistutils.cfg by default. This is an issue for anyone who installs Python on a Mac via Homebrew.

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Homebrew-and-Python.md#note-on-pip-install---user

[xuchen]

Nice catch, to summarize:

because of a bug in distutils, brewed Python disables pip install --user and instead writes ~/.distutils.cfg for a workaround, but this breaks virtualenv's pip.

How should this be fixed? Not counting on distutils ....

[stale]

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