"Internal error" running beets after installation using PIP

[dannn-o]

Problem

I installed beets using PIP (pip install beets), and did not see any errors or unusual messages during the installation. Afterward, any beets command I try to execute results in this error message:

internal error, please report: running "beets.beet" failed: cannot find installed snap "beets" at revision 6: missing file /snap/beets/6/meta/snap.yaml

Here is relevant output from the terminal:

$ pip install beets
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting beets
  Using cached beets-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (9.0 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: confuse>=1.5.0 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (2.0.1)
Requirement already satisfied: jellyfish in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (1.1.0)
Requirement already satisfied: lap>=0.5.12 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (0.5.12)
Requirement already satisfied: mediafile>=0.12.0 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (0.12.0)
Requirement already satisfied: musicbrainzngs>=0.4 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from beets) (0.7.1)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.24.4 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (2.2.5)
Requirement already satisfied: platformdirs>=3.5.0 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (4.3.8)
Requirement already satisfied: pyyaml in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (6.0.2)
Requirement already satisfied: unidecode>=1.3.6 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from beets) (1.3.8)
Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.9 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from mediafile>=0.12.0->beets) (1.16.0)
Requirement already satisfied: mutagen>=1.46 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from mediafile>=0.12.0->beets) (1.47.0)
Using cached beets-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl (558 kB)
Installing collected packages: beets
Successfully installed beets-2.3.0
$ beet version
internal error, please report: running "beets.beet" failed: cannot find installed snap "beets" at revision 6: missing file /snap/beets/6/meta/snap.yaml
$ beet config -e
internal error, please report: running "beets.beet" failed: cannot find installed snap "beets" at revision 6: missing file /snap/beets/6/meta/snap.yaml
$ beet --plugins=
internal error, please report: running "beets.beet" failed: cannot find installed snap "beets" at revision 6: missing file /snap/beets/6/meta/snap.yaml

Setup

• OS: Linux Mint 21.3
• Python version: 3.10.12
• beets version: latest (2.3.0)
• Turning off plugins made problem go away (yes/no): No

[wisp3rwind]

Moving this to a discussion, since it doesn't look like a beets issue, but rather conflicting/incompatible installations.

[wisp3rwind]

Looks reasonable, yes. I was asking because of the reference to snaps in the error message. I don't know anything really about snaps, but this suggested to me that there might be remnants of a previous beets install via snap (not sure whether that is actually a thing). I wouldn't know where to look for those and how to fix it, though.

[dannn-o]

I don't think Linux Mint has snaps enabled. The Software Manager (which I didn't even use) only offers system packages (.DEB) or Flatpak/Flathub packages, and the system package for beets is pretty old (v1.6.0-1). The only installation commands I used was what was given at the beets documentation web site (https://beets.readthedocs.io).

I examined the beet script at .local/bin/beet, and this is what is there:

#!/usr/bin/python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
import sys
from beets.ui import main
if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.argv[0] = re.sub(r'(-script\.pyw|\.exe)?$', '', sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(main())

Let me know if that is correct. I don't think an environmental problem should lead to an internal error after installation, but I really don't know what else to look at without trying to dig deeper into the source code. Seems the dependencies were satisfied by the installation script.

BTW: If I launch a terminal window from the .local/bin/beet path and run beets from there directly, it seems to avoid the internal error:

dan@XPS-8940:~/.local/bin$ ./beet version
beets version 2.3.0
Python version 3.10.12
plugins: discogs, embedart, fetchart, importreplace, lyrics, scrub, zero
dan@XPS-8940:~/.local/bin$ 

[dannn-o]

Update: So, after launching beets directly from the path above, I then closed the terminal window and launched it again from using the default path (my home directory). This time, it ran successfully without the internal error. I issued several commands, exited the terminal session and relaunched, and tested again, and it seems to be working as expected now.

Did launching it manually that one time "do something" that somehow remedied whatever was causing the internal error before??

[wisp3rwind]

As I said; that error wasn't coming from beets directly, so I don't know. From a quick search, that error message does seem to be related to snap, however that ended up on your system. This sounds a bit like there might have some shell function/alias that interfered the first time?

[dannn-o]

I don't have a guess how that could have happened. It would actually be great if there were a Snap or Flatpak package available for beets, since those tend to avoid errors like this by embedding all dependencies and isolating the application.

Just for grins, I ran snap list, but I don't see an entry relating to beets:

 dan@XPS-8940:~$ snap list
Name                                  Version                     Rev    Tracking       Publisher   Notes
bare                                  1.0                         5      latest/stable  canonical✓  base
core18                                20250123                    2855   latest/stable  canonical✓  base
core20                                20250407                    2571   latest/stable  canonical✓  base
core22                                20250408                    1963   latest/stable  canonical✓  base
gnome-3-28-1804                       3.28.0-19-g98f9e67.98f9e67  198    latest/stable  canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes                     0.1-81-g442e511             1535   latest/stable  canonical✓  -
kde-frameworks-5-99-qt-5-15-7-core20  5.99.0                      7      latest/stable  kde✓        -
kde-frameworks-5-core18               5.67.0                      35     latest/stable  kde✓        -
mesa-core22                           23.2.1                      368    latest/stable  canonical✓  -
puddletag-snap                        2.2.0                       9      latest/stable  tschlaeppi  -
raindrop                              5.6.76                      28     latest/stable  exentrich   -
snapd                                 2.68.4                      24505  latest/stable  canonical✓  snapd
dan@XPS-8940:~$ 

And, I have no idea why running beets from the where path would do anything to resolve a Snap-related issue. If you think this is environment related and no one else is reporting the issue, I guess I'll just have to scratch my head and wonder.