most recent version does not install /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources/extern and /_vendor

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Yes this is also effecting me too and blocking my auto deploy projects across the board.

I am experiencing the same issue as well. Are there any known workarounds for now, before it's fixed?

Same issue here with our Chef builds.

       ---- Begin output of /usr/bin/pip install cryptography ----
       STDOUT:
       STDERR: Traceback (most recent call last):
         File "/usr/bin/pip", line 5, in <module>
           from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
         File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 70, in <module>
           import packaging.version
       ImportError: No module named packaging.version
       ---- End output of /usr/bin/pip install cryptography ----
       Ran /usr/bin/pip install cryptography returned 1
       [2017-01-25T09:04:40+00:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::ChildConvergeError: Chef run process exited unsuccessfully (exit code 1)

Is there a work around for this?

This issue is breaking our puppet configuration scripts. Breaking pip can lead to some serious problems, I hope this is considered a critical bug.

+1 for experiencing the issue and breaking our builds.

Has anyone figured out a way around this bug? Haven't been able to deploy since.

This isn't a good workaround for most people I'm sure, but I upgraded to 16.04 which doesn't have the issue. The specific app I'm hitting this bug with is a Python app in a Docker container so it's pretty easy to just rebuild my image against 16.04. I'll be downgrading once this is fixed though.

Found a work-around (https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/937)

Install pip from python not packages and then setuptools from pip.

python -m pip install -U pip
pip install -U pip setuptools

When using the new pip its located in /usr/local/bin/pip

The workaround doesn't work for my auto build environments, it would be good if we can get an official fix still.

I believe I figured out the problem. When spinning up a fresh ubuntu 14.04 vagrant machine and manually installing pip with sudo apt-get install python-pip the dependency pkg_resources is installed with python3-pkg-resources to. I experience the same results if I use a ubuntu 14.04 image in an oracle VM. The workaround is to install pip with easy_install via python-setuptools and pip will work.

In [1]: import setuptools
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-1-b6e7bae96787> in <module>()
----> 1 import setuptools

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools/__init__.pyc in <module>()
     10
     11 import setuptools.version
---> 12 from setuptools.extension import Extension
     13 from setuptools.dist import Distribution, Feature, _get_unpatched
     14 from setuptools.depends import Require

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools/extension.py in <module>()
      5 import distutils.extension
      6
----> 7 from setuptools.dist import _get_unpatched
      8
      9 _Extension = _get_unpatched(distutils.core.Extension)

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/setuptools/dist.py in <module>()
     14 from setuptools.depends import Require
     15 from setuptools.compat import numeric_types, basestring
---> 16 import pkg_resources
     17
     18 def _get_unpatched(cls):

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py in <module>()
     68 importlib_machinery = None
     69
---> 70 import packaging.version
     71 import packaging.specifiers
     72 import packaging.requirements

ImportError: No module named packaging.version

Something from the description is confusing me:

"""
This is new install of lubuntu 14.04, installing python-pip
Most recent python-pip version, installed 23 Jan 2017, does not install /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources/extern and /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources//_vendor.
"""

Note the /usr/local paths. While these paths are on Ubuntu python's sys.path by default, installing things from PyPI into these locations with `sudo pip install` can very definitely interfere with system packages like pip. We do not recommend `sudo pip install` but instead `pip install --user` which will put things in your ~/.local directory. That should reduce or eliminate the conflicts.

Since it seems likely to me that this is a local configuration problem,
rather than a bug in Ubuntu, I am marking this bug as 'Incomplete'.

However, if you believe that this is really a bug in Ubuntu, then we would
be grateful if you would provide a more complete description of the problem
with steps to reproduce, explain why you believe this is a bug in Ubuntu
rather than a problem specific to your system, and then change the bug
status back to "New".

For local configuration issues, you can find assistance here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community