Python pip install module is not found. How to link python to pip location?

Question

I'm a newbie and I needed the pySerial and feedparser module for my projects. I'm running Mountain lion.

I followed the following tutorial so that I could upgrade to python 2.7.3 and then use the above mentioned modules.

http://hackercodex.com/guide/python-virtualenv-on-mac-osx-mountain-lion-10.8/

I followed this tutorial till I installed pip. Instead of installing Virtualenv. I used the following commands to install pySerial and feedparser

$ pip install pySerial Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): pySerial in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages Cleaning up... 

I assumed that this was already present and checked it. Python seems to be importing this just fine. My python version has been upgraded to 2.7.3 btw since I installed it using homebrew as mentioned in the tutorial.

Then I tried installing feedparser

$ pip install feedparser Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): feedparser in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages Cleaning up... 

Notice how its in the site-packages directory in the usr/local/lib.

All of my pip installs are being installed in that directory but python does not seem to be picking them up when i try importing them.

How do I set the path so that python also looks there as well as core directory?

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

I tried looking for answers here: Pip installs but module is not found Why I can't import beautifulsoup on mac using python 2.7 after installing it by using pip and/or easy_install?

but niether of them are in the same situation as I am. I don't understand why this is happening as i edited my bash_profile with the following

# Set architecture flags export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" # Ensure user-installed binaries take precedence export PATH=/usr/local/share/python:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin # Load .bashrc if it exists test -f ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc 

then installed homebrew and then installed python 2.7.3 through homebrew (2.7.3 is now currently running on my machine)

I figured all pip installs would be correctly linked?

Answer 1

As a quick workaround, and assuming that you are on a bash-like terminal (Linux/OSX), you can try to export the PYTHONPATH environment variable:

export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages:/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages" 

For Python 2.7

Answer 2

Here is something I learnt after a long time of having issues with pip when I had several versions of Python installed (valid especially for OS X users which are probably using brew to install python blends.)

I assume that most python developers do have at the beginning of their scripts:

#!/bin/env python 

You may be surprised to find out that this is not necessarily the same python as the one you run from the command line >python

To be sure you install the package using the correct pip instance for your python interpreter you need to run something like:

>/bin/env python -m pip install --upgrade mymodule