Python Version Dependency Issue - pip uninstall

Question

I'm getting an error when I'm trying to uninstall matplotlib or upgrade pip. For example:

%pip install --upgrade pip  

After it downloads pip and installs it, it tries to uninstall the old version. I get the error:

You are using pip version 7.1.0, however version 8.0.2 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.
Collecting pip  
  Downloading pip-8.0.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.2MB)  
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.2MB 506kB/s   
Installing collected packages: pip  
  Found existing installation: pip 7.1.0  
    Uninstalling pip-7.1.0:  
Exception:  
Traceback (most recent call last):  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 223, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 299, in run
    root=options.root_path,  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_set.py", line 640, in install
    requirement.uninstall(auto_confirm=True)  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_install.py", line 726, in uninstall
    paths_to_remove.remove(auto_confirm)  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_uninstall.py", line 125, in remove
    renames(path, new_path)  
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 314, in renames
    shutil.move(old, new)  
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 300, in move
    rmtree(src)
  File   "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 247, in rmtree
    rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror)
  File   "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 252, in rmtree
    onerror(os.remove, fullname, sys.exc_info())  
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 250, in rmtree
    os.remove(fullname)
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.1.0-py2.7.egg/EGG-INFO/dependency_links.txt'

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try this : sudo pip install --upgrade pip

Why sudo ? sudo is always run with superuser privileges (as root). Thus sudo has the ability to do some privileged tasks like calling system functions only allowed for root. Since you are getting a permission denied error, running the same command using sudo will not ask for permission since you are root