How should I upgrade pip on Ubuntu 14.04?

Question

I want to get the most recent version (8.1.2) of pip. I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 and python 2.7.6. The version of pip in the Ubuntu repositories is only 1.5.4 (and can't install things like numpy). How are you actually meant to upgrade pip? I've discovered a few ways; maybe they're all equivalent but it would be good to know for sure.

Option 1: Upgrade pip with pip and change the link

apt-get install python-pip
pip install --upgrade pip
pip --version  # still shows 1.5.4
ln -s /usr/local/bin/pip /usr/bin/
pip --version  # 8.1.2, success!

Option 1a: Like above, but use python -m pip

pip install --upgrade pip
pip --version  # still shows 1.5.4
python -m pip --version  # 8.1.2, success!

Option 2: easy_install

easy_install -U pip
pip --version  # 8.1.2, success!

Option 3: Use a virtualenv (I know virtualenvs are awesome but I'm doing the installing in a docker container, so I was just going to install things globally).

virtualenv test123
source test123/bin/activate
pip --version  # pip 8.1.2 from ~/test123/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Option 4: The pip website suggests using their get-pip.py script, but also says this might leave the Ubuntu package manager in an inconsistent state.

Option 5: Upgrade Python: "pip is already installed if you're using Python 2 >=2.7.9", but this seems like overkill.

Is one of these the preferred method? Is there a better way I haven't found? Am I overthinking this?

Answer 1

The most painless way that I found that works is to use install virtualenv and use pip inside a virtualenv. This does not even require you install pip at the system level (which you might have done by running sudo apt-get install python-pip):

sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv  # install virtualenv
virtualenv venv  # create a virtualenv named venv
source venv/bin/activate  # activate virtualenv
pip install -U pip  # upgrade pip inside virtualenv