How do I update/upgrade pip itself from inside my virtual environment?

Question

I'm able to update pip-managed packages, but how do I update pip itself? According to pip --version, I currently have pip 1.1 installed in my virtualenv and I want to update to the latest version.

What's the command for that? Do I need to use distribute or is there a native pip or virtualenv command? I've already tried pip update and pip update pip with no success.

Answer 1

pip is just a PyPI package like any other; you could use it to upgrade itself the same way you would upgrade any package:

pip install --upgrade pip

On Windows the recommended command is:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

Answer 2

The more safe method is to run pip though a python module:

python -m pip install -U pip

On windows there seem to be a problem with binaries that try to replace themselves, this method works around that limitation.