pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: argparse on RHEL-based distros

[stemid]

$ tmuxp
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/tmuxp", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2655, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 648, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 546, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: argparse

This would seem like a bug in RHEL-based distros but all the fixes I've seen for this have been from package maintainers, and not from the distro.

• Example #1.
• Example #2.
• Example #3.

I wish I knew what they did to fix it, or I would contribute. But I don't understand what the fix is, I can just see that several other packages run into this problem on RHEL-based distros.

I've tried on Fedora 22, CentOS 7 and RHEL 6.

$ python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Jun 24 2015, 00:41:19)
[GCC 4.8.3 20140911 (Red Hat 4.8.3-9)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pkg_resources
>>> pkg_resources.get_distribution('argparse')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 371, in get_distribution
    if isinstance(dist,Requirement): dist = get_provider(dist)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 243, in get_provider
    return working_set.find(moduleOrReq) or require(str(moduleOrReq))[0]
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 728, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 626, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: argparse
>>> import argparse
>>> argparse.__version__
'1.1'

[tony]

This does seem to be a issue that exists. I have some a bit of digging, but not sure if it's a problem on tmuxp's end of things (or one of it's dependencies) or not.

See also: elastic/curator#56

Does pip install -U setuptools do anything to help?

[stemid]

Yes it does @tony! Problem solved I think.

I tried first to upgrade setuptools on Fedora 22, and tmuxp sprang to life. Then I tried on RHEL6 and same there, tmuxp started working.

Thanks for your assistance.

[bulak]

Not sure if it's relevant but in your example pkg_resources is loaded from python2.6 where argparse does not exists, min version is 2.7. Upgrading should help with your probem, no?

[tony]

We should probably add something to the docs for Fedora / Redhat / CentOS users who may encounter this problem. A .. note:: in https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/doc/quickstart.rst may be a good spot. @stemid Want to give it a shot?

[tony]

Fixed in #112