pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound

Using OS X version 10.10.3, pip 7.0.3installed in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-7.0.3-py2.7.egg, (python 2.7):

Any module I try to install now returns the error pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: ... when trying to execute the installed module. Pip seems to install the modules successfully, although executing anything afterward results in this behavior.

$ pip install mitmproxy
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): mitmproxy in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): pyperclip>=1.5.8 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): pyasn1>0.1.2 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): tornado>=4.0.2 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): lxml>=3.3.6 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): pyOpenSSL>=0.14 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): netlib<0.13,>=0.12 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): blinker>=1.3 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): Pillow>=2.3.0 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): urwid>=1.3 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): configargparse>=0.9.3 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): backports.ssl-match-hostname in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from tornado>=4.0.2->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): certifi in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from tornado>=4.0.2->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): six>=1.5.2 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): cryptography>=0.7 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): passlib>=1.6.2 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from netlib<0.13,>=0.12->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): idna in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): setuptools in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python (from cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): enum34 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): ipaddress in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): cffi>=0.8 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): pycparser in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from cffi>=0.8->cryptography>=0.7->pyOpenSSL>=0.14->mitmproxy)

Installation seems to be fine, however, executing the command results in:

$ mitmproxy
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/mitmproxy", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 2671, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 654, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 552, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: Pillow>=2.3.0

Another example:

$ pip install clf
Collecting clf
  Downloading clf-0.5.5.tar.gz
Collecting Pygments>=1.5 (from clf)
  Downloading Pygments-2.0.2-py2-none-any.whl (672kB)
    100% |################################| 675kB 8.0MB/s 
Collecting docopt>=0.6.0 (from clf)
  Downloading docopt-0.6.2.tar.gz
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): requests>=2.3.0 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from clf)
Installing collected packages: docopt, Pygments, clf
  Running setup.py install for docopt
  Running setup.py install for clf
    Installing clf script to /usr/local/bin
Successfully installed Pygments-2.0.2 clf-0.5.5 docopt-0.6.2

Executing the command:

$ clf osx
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/clf", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 2671, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 654, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 552, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: requests>=2.3.0

I’m not sure what happened to pip, as nothing recently changed in my environment, and pip seemed to be working fine before.

[Ubiquitous]

Thanks for the warning — it prepared me for what was coming.

I’m not exactly sure how I fixed the problem to be quite honest, since after uninstalling distribute both pip and easy_install seemed to be completely borked. I think the key thing that got pip back on track was to use the --upgrade flag on setuptools after reinstalling:

$ sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools

[MaartenW]

Ran into a similar problem. El Capitan has System Integrity Protection I needed to add --user to @Ubiquitous’ solution: sudo pip install --user --upgrade setuptools solved it for me