transport_encoding error during installing with pip

Question

I'm getting unexpected arg: keyword encoding in parse() while trying to install any python package through pip.

I'm getting this problem since i installed tensorflow for python 3.6, which probably led to some issue with html5lib and setuptools. Have reinstalled html5lib1.0b10 using tar.gz file (admin install) but the issue still remains. Please help!!

pip install spacy
Collecting spacy
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 335, in run
    wb.build(autobuilding=True)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\wheel.py", line 749, in build
    self.requirement_set.prepare_files(self.finder)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\req\req_set.py", line 380, in prepare_files
    ignore_dependencies=self.ignore_dependencies))
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\req\req_set.py", line 554, in _prepare_file
    require_hashes
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\req\req_install.py", line 278, in populate_link
    self.link = finder.find_requirement(self, upgrade)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 465, in find_requirement
    all_candidates = self.find_all_candidates(req.name)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 423, in find_all_candidates
    for page in self._get_pages(url_locations, project_name):
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 568, in _get_pages
    page = self._get_page(location)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 683, in _get_page
    return HTMLPage.get_page(link, session=self.session)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 811, in get_page
    inst = cls(resp.content, resp.url, resp.headers)
  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 731, in __init__
    namespaceHTMLElements=False,
TypeError: parse() got an unexpected keyword argument 'transport_encoding'

Answer 1

Issue was indeed with html5lib and setuptools, I re-installed html5lib using

conda install -c anaconda html5lib

Although package versions were same, it said 'The following packages will be SUPERSEDED by a higher-priority channel', and installed conda, conda-env, html5lib. I'm unsure about higher-priority channel part. But this answered my problem!!

Answer 2

Problem appears after installing tensorflow 1.3.0.

Reinstall html5lib.

conda uninstall html5lib --force
conda install html5lib

Solves the problem temporarily until next pip install --upgrade tensorflow. Had the same problem with pip install --upgrade tensorflow-gpu as well.