Upgrade Pip error message

Question

When i run

    pip install --upgrade pip

I get this error message:

    Collecting pip
    Downloading pip-8.1.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.2MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.2MB 371kB/s 
    Installing collected packages: pip
    Found existing installation: pip 8.0.2
    Uninstalling pip-8.0.2:
    Exception:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line       209, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 317, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line  725, in install
    requirement.uninstall(auto_confirm=True)
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 752, in uninstall
    paths_to_remove.remove(auto_confirm)
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_uninstall.py",line 115, in remove
    renames(path, new_path)
    File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 266,   in renames
    shutil.move(old, new)
    File"/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 303, in move
    os.unlink(src)
    OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Library/Python/2.7/site- packages/pip-8.0.2.dist-info/DESCRIPTION.rst'

Previously I had been struggling to install and run a couple of python modules so I remember moving files around a bit. Is that what has caused this error? How can I fix this? I am on Mac.

I was trying to install bs4 prior to this and I got similar error messages. (But i suspect the bs4 install has more issues so that's another question for later).

Also sorry for any format issues with the code. Have tried my best to make it look like it is on the terminal.

Thanks.

Answer 1

A permission issue means your user privileges don't allow you to write on the desired folder(/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip/). There's basically two things you can do:

1. run pip as sudo:

   sudo pip install --upgrade pip
   

2. Configure pip to install only for the current user, as covered here and here.

Answer 2

The best way to do it is as follows:

$ python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

as it's generally not advised to use

$ sudo pip install

More answers can be found here: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5599