Broken pip3 and easy_install3: DistributionNotFound

Question

My pip3 seems to be broken:

$ pip3 --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pip3", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2708, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 686, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 584, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: pip==1.5.6

I tried to fix it by reinstalling pip3 with easy_install3, but easy_install3 is also broken:

$ sudo easy_install3 --upgrade pip3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/easy_install3", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2708, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 686, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 584, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: distribute==0.6.24dev-r0

Reinstalling pip3 from apt did not help either.

$ sudo apt-get remove python3-pip
$ sudo apt-get install --fix-missing -t testing python3-pip

I am running Debian 7 (stable). I have Python 3.4.2 installed from the testing repository.

Answer 1

Probably the easiest way to get everything working again is to download get-pip.py, then run

sudo python3 get-pip.py

This will upgrade pip to the latest version (currently 6.1.1) and update setuptools as well.