ImportError: No module named setuptools (add details to docs)

Users are getting “ImportError: No module named setuptools” when using pip to upgrade a package since distribute-0.7.3 was released.

e.g. when running a command like this: pip install --upgrade pyramid

Solution

To prevent the problem in new environments (that aren’t broken yet),

1. First run pip install -U setuptools,
2. Then run the command to upgrade your package (e.g. pip install --upgrade pyramid)

To fix the problem once it’s occurred, you’ll need to manually install the new setuptools, then rerun the upgrade that failed.

1. Download ez_setup.py (https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/downloads/ez_setup.py)
2. Run python ez_setup.py
3. Then rerun your upgrade (e.g. pip install --upgrade pyramid)

Also note that pip-1.4 (unreleased) has fixes to prevent this

Cause

distribute-0.7.3 is just an empty wrapper that only serves to require the new setuptools (setuptools>=0.7) so that it will be installed. (if you don’t know yet, the “new setuptools” is a merge of distribute and setuptools back into one project)

distribute-0.7.3 does it’s job well, when the upgrade is done in isolation. E.g. if you’re currently on distribute-0.6.X, then running pip install -U setuptools works fine to upgrade you to setuptools>=0.7.

The problem occurs when:

1. you are currently using an older distribute (i.e. 0.6.X)
2. and you try to use pip to upgrade a package that depends on setuptools or distribute.

As part of the upgrade process, pip builds an install list that ends up including distribute-0.7.3 and setuptools>=0.7 , but they can end up being separated by other dependencies in the list, so what can happen is this:

1. pip uninstalls the existing distribute
2. pip installs distribute-0.7.3 (which has no importable setuptools, that pip needs internally to function)
3. pip moves onto install another dependency (before setuptools>=0.7) and is unable to proceed without the setuptools package

Note that pip-1.4 (unreleased) has fixes to prevent this. distribute-0.7.3 (or setuptools>=0.7) by themselves cannot prevent this kind of problem.

[StevenLOL]

fixed by

apt-get install --reinstall python-setuptools

[StevenLOL]

En same error again!!!

UBUNTU 15.10

python --version Python 2.7.10

sudo pip install pip -I

…successfully installed pip-8.1.0

sudo pip install setuptools

…Sucessfully … setuptools-20.2.2

sudo pip install protobuf -I

…Could not … … … No module named extern