Error after upgrading pip: cannot import name 'main'

Question

Whenever I am trying to install any package using pip, I am getting this import error:

guru@guru-notebook:~$ pip3 install numpy Traceback (most recent call last):   File "/usr/bin/pip3", line 9, in <module>     from pip import main ImportError: cannot import name 'main' 

guru@guru-notebook:~$ cat `which pip3` #!/usr/bin/python3 # GENERATED BY DEBIAN  import sys  # Run the main entry point, similarly to how setuptools does it, but because # we didn't install the actual entry point from setup.py, don't use the # pkg_resources API. from pip import main if __name__ == '__main__':     sys.exit(main()) 

It was working fine earlier, I am not sure why it is throwing this error. I have searched about this error, but can't find anything to fix it.

Please let me know if you need any further detail, I will update my question.

Answer 1

You must have inadvertently upgraded your system pip (probably through something like sudo pip install pip --upgrade)

pip 10.x adjusts where its internals are situated. The pip3 command you're seeing is one provided by your package maintainer (presumably debian based here?) and is not a file managed by pip.

You can read more about this on pip's issue tracker

You'll probably want to not upgrade your system pip and instead use a virtualenv.

To recover the pip3 binary you'll need to sudo python3 -m pip uninstall pip && sudo apt install python3-pip --reinstall.

If you want to continue in "unsupported territory" (upgrading a system package outside of the system package manager), you can probably get away with python3 -m pip ... instead of pip3.

Answer 2

We can clear the error by modifying the pip file.

Check the location of the file:

$ which pip 

path -> /usr/bin/pip

Go to that location(/usr/bin/pip) and open terminal

Enter: $ sudo nano pip

You can see:

import sys from pip import main if __name__ == '__main__':      sys.exit(main()) 

Change to:

import sys from pip import __main__ if __name__ == '__main__':      sys.exit(__main__._main()) 

then ctrl + o write the changes and exit

Hope this will do!!