Django 1.9 Installation SyntaxError: invalid syntax [duplicate]

Question

I am trying to install django 1.9 in my Ubuntu Box (14.04 LTS) with virtualenv enabled. but I got this wired installation problem.

(venv)nix1947$ pip install django
Downloading/unpacking django
  Downloading Django-1.9-py2.py3-none-any.whl (6.6MB): 6.6MB downloaded
Installing collected packages: django
*** Error compiling '/home/nix1947/projects/newsportal/venv/build/django/django/conf/app_template/apps.py'...
  File "/home/nix1947/projects/newsportal/venv/build/django/django/conf/app_template/apps.py", line 4
    class {{ camel_case_app_name }}Config(AppConfig):
          ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

*** Error compiling '/home/nix1947/projects/newsportal/venv/build/django/django/conf/app_template/models.py'...
  File "/home/nix1947/projects/newsportal/venv/build/django/django/conf/app_template/models.py", line 1
    {{ unicode_literals }}from django.db import models
                             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Successfully installed django
Cleaning up...

Is this the problem in django source code ? or am I missing something ?

the python that I have used is python3 in virtualenv which is enabled by virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 venv command and the version of pip that I am using is

pip 1.5.4 from /home/nix1947/projects/newsportal/venv/lib/python3.4/site-packages (python 3.4)

and virtualenv version is

(venv)nix1947$ virtualenv --version
1.11.4

What is the problem, Can someone guide me

Answer 1

This is a common issue caused by an outdated version of setuptools (5.5.x):

When installing Django 1.9+ with setuptools 5.5.x, you’ll see:

Compiling django/conf/app_template/apps.py ...   File
"django/conf/app_template/apps.py", line 4
    class {{ camel_case_app_name }}Config(AppConfig):
          ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Compiling django/conf/app_template/models.py ...   File
"django/conf/app_template/models.py", line 1
    {{ unicode_literals }}from django.db import models
                             ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

It’s safe to ignore these errors (Django will still install just fine), but you can avoid them by upgrading setuptools to a more recent version. If you’re using pip, you can upgrade pip using pip install -U pip which will also upgrade setuptools.

(Source: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/releases/1.9/#syntaxerror-when-installing-django-setuptools-5-5-x)

---

The solution is to upgrade pip first (which also upgrades setuptools) and then install django again:

pip install -U pip
pip install django