Updating the pip.conf file to use https

Question

I am having trouble configuring my pip.conf file to stipulate that PIP should look for downloads from https://pypi.python.org/simple/ rather than http://pypi.python.org/simple/

I have a related question posted PIP Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement SQLAlchemy where a couple of people diagnosed what was going wrong. However I am having trouble putting in place the solution.

I opend my pip.conf file located at /home/user/.pip/pip.conf using the pip config file documentation I added the below. There is nothing else in the file.

[global]
timeout = 60
find-links = https://pypi.python.org/simple/

[install]
find-links = https://pypi.python.org/simple/

After saving an exiting there is no change. I still cannot run commands such as pip install

$ sudo pip install SQLAlchemy
Downloading/unpacking SQLAlchemy
  Cannot fetch index base URL http://pypi.python.org/simple/
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement SQLAlchemy
No distributions at all found for SQLAlchemy
Storing complete log in /home/user/.pip/pip.log 

My setup

• Ubunto 12.04 VM

Answer 1

You should use index-url = https://pypi.python.org/simple/ rather than find-links in your config. This will replace the default rather than just adding another option (which is what find-links does).

Answer 2

From latest guide: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/topics/configuration/

The new default configuration file is: $HOME/.config/pip/pip.conf

Legacy per-user configuration file which is also respected:

On Unix and macOS the configuration file is: $HOME/.pip/pip.conf

Answer 3

Update from 2011-04-04 version to latest one

pip version 1.0 is fairly old, pypi shows date 2011-04-04. Consider installing latest version.

Since 2011 there were some significant changes (security fixes, support for wheel format...)

I would first remove completely the pip installed by apt-get, incl. cleaning whatever is in directories around. And then install using get-pip.py as described on pypa.

I know, that it is often recommended following Linux distribution packages, but with pip it is simply not practical.