'unrecognized arguments: --no-site-packages' during esp-idf tools installation (IEP-181)

Hi, I freshly downloaded and installed esp-idf 4.0 on Win10 according to the documentation I could successfully flash and monitor the hello world example from command line. Then I wanted to do the same in eclipse, so I proceeded by the readme.md of this project. At ‘Installing ESP-IDF Tools’ the console shows this error:

Executing C:\Program Files (x86)\Python38-32\python.exe C:\DEV\esp-idf40\dl\tools\idf_tools.py install-python-env
usage: virtualenv [--version] [--with-traceback] [-v | -q] [--app-data APP_DATA] [--clear-app-data] [--discovery {builtin}] [-p py] [--creator {builtin,cpython3-win,venv}] [--seeder {app-data,pip}] [--no-seed] [--activators comma_sep_list]
                  [--clear] [--system-site-packages] [--copies] [--no-download | --download] [--extra-search-dir d [d ...]] [--pip version] [--setuptools version] [--wheel version] [--no-pip] [--no-setuptools] [--no-wheel]
                  [--symlink-app-data] [--prompt prompt] [-h]
                  dest
virtualenv: error: unrecognized arguments: --no-site-packages
Creating a new Python environment in C:\DEV\esp-idf40\python_env\idf4.0_py3.8_env
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\DEV\esp-idf40\dl\tools\idf_tools.py", line 1372, in <module>
    main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "C:\DEV\esp-idf40\dl\tools\idf_tools.py", line 1368, in main
    action_func(args)
  File "C:\DEV\esp-idf40\dl\tools\idf_tools.py", line 1182, in action_install_python_env
    subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, '-m', 'virtualenv', '--no-site-packages', idf_python_env_path],
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python38-32\lib\subprocess.py", line 364, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Python38-32\\python.exe', '-m', 'virtualenv', '--no-site-packages', 'C:\\DEV\\esp-idf40\\python_env\\idf4.0_py3.8_env']' returned non-zero exit status 2.

To Reproduce

1. Delete the ‘python-env’ folder from your ‘esp-idf’ folder, and make sure you have Python38-32 installed
2. Install ESP-IDF Tools as described in the readme.md
3. See the console

Expected behavior successfull installation, and an item showing up in eclipse ‘Help/Espressive IDF tools manager/List installed tools’

Screenshots

Environment Information: eclipseConfig.txt

ESP-IDF Tools Information: Help > Espressif Tools Manager > List Installed Tools —> this list is empty 😦

Any help is welcome - Thanks

[igrr]

Hi @ahinsen, this is an issue in v4.0 release, which has a fix on release/v4.0 branch (see https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/5204#issuecomment-620537960). Please try one of the following:

• run the installer again, this time choosing “release/v4.0” version of IDF to download
• update the existing copy of IDF using git checkout release/v4.0, git pull origin release/v4.0.

[kolipakakondal]

Closing this issue for now, please report us back if you see the same issue with our recent release.