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How to fix "module 'platform' has no attribute 'linux_distribution'" when installing new packages with Python3.8?

I had Python versions of 2.7 and 3.5. I wanted the install a newer version of Python which is python 3.8. I am using Ubuntu 16.04 and I can not just uninstall Python 3.5 due to the dependencies. So in order to run my scripts, I use python3.8 app.py. No problem so far. But when I want to install new packages via pip:
python3.8 -m pip install pylint
It throws an error:
AttributeError: module 'platform' has no attribute 'linux_distribution'
So far, I tried:
sudo update-alternatives --config python3
and chose python3.8 and run command by starting with python3 but no luck.
Then:
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python3.5 /usr/bin/python3
I also tried running the command by starting with python3 but it did not work either.
How can I fix it so that I can install new packages to my new version of Python?

It looks like at least on my Ubuntu 16.04, pip is shared for all Python versions in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip.
This is what I did to get it working again:
sudo apt remove python3-pip
sudo python3.8 -m easy_install pip
You might want to install the python 3.5 version of pip again with sudo python3.5 -m easy_install pip.

Python 3.8 removed some stuff. I solved my problems with pip (specifically pip install) by installing pip with curl.
What worked for me was downloading get-pip.py and run it with Python 3.8:
cd ~/Downloads
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python3.8 get-pip.py
Source: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/

The problem is that package.linux_distribution was deprecated starting with Python 3.5(?). and removed altogether for Python 3.8.
Use the distro package instead. This package only works on Linux however.
I ran into this problem after installing OpenCobolIDE on Linux Mint 20, having upgraded Python to the latest level. have submitted a code fix to the OpenCobolIDE author to review and test. I was able to get the IDE to start up and run with this fix.
Essentially the fix uses the distro package if available, otherwise it uses the old platform package. For example:
This code imports distro if available:
import platform
using_distro = False
try:
import distro
using_distro = True
except ImportError:
pass
Then you can test the value of using_distro to determine whether to get the linux distro type from package or distro, for example:
if using_distro:
linux_distro = distro.like()
else:
linux_distro = platform.linux_distribution()[0]

In my case, removing python-pip-whl package helped:
apt-get remove python-pip-whl
It removed also pip and virtualenv, so I had to install them again:
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3
pip install virtualenv

Check if your wheels installation is old. I was getting this same error and fixed it with
python3.8 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
Pylint seems to work on python3.8

I recently had this error and it turns out that I had a package called platform at a folder on my path ahead of the standard library and so the interpreter imported that instead. Check your path to what it is that you're actually importing.

If you have this issue when running a docker-compose up command. The solutions above do not work. You should install docker ce (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-20-04)

Python pip not working with egg_info error [duplicate]

I'm trying to install some packages with pip.
But pip install unroll gives me
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in
C:\Users\MARKAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-build-wa7uco0k\unroll\
How can I solve this?

About the error code
According to the Python documentation:
This module makes available standard errno system symbols. The value of each symbol is the corresponding integer value. The names and descriptions are borrowed from linux/include/errno.h, which should be pretty all-inclusive.
Error code 1 is defined in errno.h and means Operation not permitted.
About your error
Your setuptools do not appear to be installed. Just follow the Installation Instructions from the PyPI website.
If it's already installed, try
pip install --upgrade setuptools
If it's already up to date, check that the module ez_setup is not missing. If it is, then
pip install ez_setup
Then try again
pip install unroll
If it's still not working, maybe pip didn't install/upgrade setup_tools properly so you might want to try
easy_install -U setuptools
And again
pip install unroll

Here's a little guide explaining a little bit how I usually install new packages on Python + Windows. It seems you're using Windows paths, so this answer will stick to that particular SO:
I never use a system-wide Python installation. I only use virtualenvs, and usually I try to have the latest version of 2.x & 3.x.
My first attempt is always doing pip install package_i_want in some of my Visual Studio command prompts. What Visual Studio command prompt? Well, ideally the Visual Studio which matches the one which was used to build Python. For instance, let's say your Python installation says Python 2.7.11 (v2.7.11:6d1b6a68f775, Dec 5 2015, 20:40:30) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32. The version of Visual Studio used to compile Python can be found here, so v1500 means I'd be using vs2008 x64 command prompt
If the previous step failed for some reason I just try using easy_install package_i_want
If the previous step failed for some reason I go to gohlke website and I check whether my package is available over there. If it's so, I'm lucky, I just download it into my virtualenv and then I just go to that location using a command prompt and I do pip install package_i_want.whl
If the previous step didn't succeed I'll just try to build the wheel myself and once it's generated I'll try to install it with pip install package_i_want.whl
Now, if we focus in your specific problem, where you're having a hard time installing the unroll package. It seems the fastest way to install it is doing something like this:
git clone https://github.com/Zulko/unroll
cd unroll && python setup.py bdist_wheel
Copy the generated unroll-0.1.0-py2-none-any.whl file from the created dist folder into your virtualenv.
pip install unroll-0.1.0-py2-none-any.whl
That way it will install without any problems. To check it really works, just login into the Python installation and try import unroll, it shouldn't complain.
One last note: This method works almost 99% of the time, and sometimes you'll find some pip packages which are specific to Unix or Mac OS X, in that case, when that happens I'm afraid the best way to get a Windows version is either posting some issues to the main developers or having some fun by yourself porting to Windows (typically a few hours if you're not lucky) :)

It was resolved after upgrading pip:
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install "package-name"

I got stuck exactly with the same error with psycopg2. It looks like I skipped a few steps while installing Python and related packages.
sudo apt-get install python-dev libpq-dev
Go to your virtual env
pip install psycopg2
(In your case you need to replace psycopg2 with the package you have an issue with.)
It worked seamlessly.

I got this same error while installing mitmproxy using pip3. The below command fixed this:
pip3 install --upgrade setuptools

Download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=44266 - this package contains the compiler and set of system headers necessary for producing binary wheels for Python 2.7 packages.
Open a command prompt in elevated mode (run as administrator)
Firstly do pip install ez_setup
Then do pip install unroll (It will start installing numpy, music21, decorator, imageio, tqdm, moviepy, unroll) # Please be patient for music21 installation
Python 2.7.11 64 bit used

Other way:
sudo apt-get install python-psycopg2 python-mysqldb

I had the same issue when installing the "Twisted" library and solved it by running the following command on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus):
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential

It's a dependency issue.
I tried running the following commands helped me sorting out the dependencies, in my case the dependency was
grpcio
pip3 install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip3 install --no-cache-dir --force-reinstall -Iv grpcio==1.36.1
pip3 install pulsar-client==2.7.0
remember you must have python3 installed in your system.

First try:
pip install unroll
For sure not work :)
Then Try:
pip2 install unroll
Still get error Try:
pip3 install unroll
If pip3 Worked then suggest to change configuration to use pip3 as pip because you will get a lot of issues as the modern now is Python3 = pip3 if you execute a script files.

I had the same problem.
The problem was:
pyparsing 2.2 was already installed and my requirements.txt was trying to install pyparsing 2.0.1 which throw this error
Context: I was using virtualenv, and it seems the 2.2 came from my global OS Python site-packages, but even with --no-site-packages flag (now by default in last virtualenv) the 2.2 was still present. Surely because I installed Python from their website and it added Python libraries to my $PATH.
Maybe a pip install --ignore-installed would have worked.
Solution: as I needed to move forwards, I just removed the pyparsing==2.0.1 from my requirements.txt.

I ran into the same error code when trying to install a Python module with pip.
#Hackndo noted that the documentation indicate a security issue.
Based on that answer, my problem was solved by running the pip install command with sudo prefixed:
sudo pip install python-mpd2

For me this worked
python3 -m pip3 install -U pip
you can also try
python -m pip install -U pip

pip3 install --upgrade setuptools
WARNING: pip is being invoked by an old script wrapper. This will fail in a future version of pip.
Please see https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5599 for advice on fixing the underlying issue.
To avoid this problem you can invoke Python with -m pip instead of running pip directly.
Use python3 -m pip "command", eg:
python3 -m pip install --user pyqt5

I tried all of the above with no success. I then updated my Python version from 2.7.10 to 2.7.13, and it resolved the problems that I was experiencing.

That means some packages in pip are old or not correctly installed.
Try checking version and then upgrading pip.Use auto remove if that works.
If the pip command shows an error all the time for any command or it freezes, etc.
The best solution is to uninstall it or remove it completely.
Install a fresh pip and then update and upgrade your system.
I have given a solution to installing pip fresh here - python: can't open file get-pip.py error 2] no such file or directory

next installation helps me:
pip3 install cython

This worked for me:
sudo xcodebuild -license

Upgrading Python to version 3 fixed my problem. Nothing else did.

I downloaded the .whl file from http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ and then did:
pip install scipy-0.19.1-cp27-cp27m-win32.whl
Note that the version you need to use (win32/win_amd-64) depends on the version of Python and not that of Windows.

I had this problem using virtualenvs (with pipenv) on my new development setup.
I could only solve it by upgrading the psycopg2 version from 2.6.2 to 2.7.3.
More information is at https://github.com/psycopg/psycopg2/issues/594

I faced the same problem with the same error message but on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) instead:
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-install-w71uo1rg/poster/
I tested all the solutions provided above and none of them worked for me. I read the full TraceBack and found out I had to create the virtual environment with Python version 2.7 instead (the default one uses Python 3.5 instead):
virtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python2.7 my_venv
Once I activated it, I run pip install unirest successfully.

try on linux:
sudo apt install python-pip python-bluez libbluetooth-dev libboost-python-dev libboost-thread-dev libglib2.0-dev bluez bluez-hcidump

Had the same problem on my Win10 PC with different packages and tried everything mentioned so far.
Finally solved it by disabling Comodo Auto-Containment.
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, I hope it helps someone.

I had the same problem and was able to fix by doing the following.
Windows Python needs Visual C++ libraries installed via the SDK to build code, such as via setuptools.extension.Extension or numpy.distutils.core.Extension. For example, building f2py modules in Windows with Python requires Visual C++ SDK as installed above. On Linux and Mac, the C++ libraries are installed with the compiler.
https://www.scivision.co/python-windows-visual-c++-14-required/

Following below command worked for me
[root#sandbox ~]# pip install google-api-python-client==1.6.4

Methods to solve setup.pu egg_info issue when updating setuptools or not other methods doesnot works.
If CONDA version of the library is available to install use conda instead of pip.
Clone the library repo and then try installation by pip install -e . or by python setup.py install

upgrading python's version did the work for me.

I have just encountered the same problem when trying to pip install -e . a new repo. I did not notice that the contents of setup.py haven't been saved properly and I was effectively running the command with an empty setup.py.
Hence you may experience the same error message if the setup.py of the target package is either empty or malformed.

I solved it on Centos 7 by using:
sudo yum install libcurl-devel

Downgrading python package installed locally

In the server that work in (as do many other people) the "global" python has a certain version of a package, say 1.0.0.
I recently used pip to upgrade that to 1.0.2 locally for my user with the pip install --user package==1.0.2, which worked. However, now I want to uninstall my locally installed version and remain with the global one.
I've tried pip uninstall --user package==1.0.2, pip uninstall --user package, and a few other options but nothing seems to work. I always get this error:
Usage:
pip <command> [options]
no such option: --user
I also tried pip install --user package=1.0.0 but now I have both versions installed locally and python uses the most recent.
How can I do what I want?

Apparently this cannot be done with pip directly. I ended up solving it just by removing the package from ~/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/. A bit more manual than I was hoping I'd have to do.

The --user option for pip seems to have been removed but is still an option with setuptools.
So if you want to use the --user function what you can do is use pip download which will download the .whl file. You then need to extract the file using wheel unpack. I then ran python setup.py install --user (worked for numpy) and it installed the package to my home directory under .local.
I followed the documentation here.

Installing python packages with multiple versions on OSX

I am attempting to install a package for python3.4 on Mac OSX 10.9.4. As you know, python ships with OSX, so when I installed python3.4 I was happy to find that it came with its own version of pip, that would install packages to it (installing pip on a mac with multiple versions of python will cause it to install on the system's python2.7.)
I had previously tried installing this package (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/chrome/0.0.1) with my first installation of pip (the one tied to python2.7) and found that it successfully installed on that version, but not on any others.
I ran an install with the new pip keyword for python3.4 (which when called by itself spits out the help page so i know it works) and it told me that the package was already installed and to try updating. The update revealed that I already had the most recent version. so I tried uninstalling it from just the python3.4 and reinstalling to no avail, and got the same results when uninstalling pip from python2.7 and reinstalling only on version 3.4.
I know that's a bit hard to follow but hopefully that makes sense.
I also reviewed the content here with no success.
RESOLVED:
while python did have a directory named the same as a directory it uses with packages, this was not the correct directory, for me it was in a subdirectory of library. while documentation said that referencing pip2 would cause the package to install on python3.4, this was false. however, referencing pip3.4 worked for me.

My suggestion is that you start using virtualenv.
Assuming you have 3.4 installed, then you should also have pyvenv. As for pip and 3.4, it should already be installed.
Using for example version 3.4 create your own virtual environment and activate it:
$ mkdir ~/venv
$ pyvenv-3.4 ~/venv/py34
$ source ~/venv/py34/bin/activate
$ deactive # does what is says...
$ source ~/venv/py34/bin/activate
$ pip install ... # whatever package you need
With version 2.7 first install virtualenv and then create your own virtual environment and activate it. Make sure that setuptools and pip are updated:
$ virtualenv-2.7 ~/venv/venv27
$ . ~/venv/venv27/bin/activate
$ pip install -U setuptools
$ pip install -U pip
$ pip install ... # whatever package you need

No module named pkg_resources

I'm deploying a Django app to a dev server and am hitting this error when I run pip install -r requirements.txt:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/var/www/mydir/virtualenvs/dev/bin/pip", line 5, in <module>
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
ImportError: No module named pkg_resources
pkg_resources appears to be distributed with setuptools. Initially I thought this might not be installed to the Python in the virtualenv, so I installed setuptools 2.6 (same version as Python) to the Python site-packages in the virtualenv with the following command:
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg --install-dir /var/www/mydir/virtualenvs/dev/lib/python2.6/site-packages
EDIT: This only happens inside the virtualenv. If I open a console outside the virtualenv then pkg_resources is present, but I am still getting the same error.
Any ideas as to why pkg_resources is not on the path?

July 2018 Update
Most people should now use pip install setuptools (possibly with sudo).
Some may need to (re)install the python-setuptools package via their package manager (apt-get install, yum install, etc.).
This issue can be highly dependent on your OS and dev environment. See the legacy/other answers below if the above isn't working for you.
Explanation
This error message is caused by a missing/broken Python setuptools package. Per Matt M.'s comment and setuptools issue #581, the bootstrap script referred to below is no longer the recommended installation method.
The bootstrap script instructions will remain below, in case it's still helpful to anyone.
Legacy Answer
I encountered the same ImportError today while trying to use pip. Somehow the setuptools package had been deleted in my Python environment.
To fix the issue, run the setup script for setuptools:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | python
(or if you don't have wget installed (e.g. OS X), try
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py | python
possibly with sudo prepended.)
If you have any version of distribute, or any setuptools below 0.6, you will have to uninstall it first.*
See Installation Instructions for further details.
* If you already have a working distribute, upgrading it to the "compatibility wrapper" that switches you over to setuptools is easier. But if things are already broken, don't try that.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall python-pkg-resources
fixed it for me in Debian. Seems like uninstalling some .deb packages (twisted set in my case) has broken the path python uses to find packages

I have seen this error while trying to install rhodecode to a virtualenv on ubuntu 13.10. For me the solution was to run
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install --upgrade distribute
before I run easy_install rhodecode.

It also happened to me. I think the problem will happen if the requirements.txt contains a "distribute" entry while the virtualenv uses setuptools. Pip will try to patch setuptools to make room for distribute, but unfortunately it will fail half way.
The easy solution is delete your current virtualenv then make a new virtualenv with --distribute argument.
An example if using virtualenvwrapper:
$ deactivate
$ rmvirtualenv yourenv
$ mkvirtualenv yourenv --distribute
$ workon yourenv
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

In CentOS 6 installing the package python-setuptools fixed it.
yum install python-setuptools

After trying several of these answers, then reaching out to a colleague, what worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 was:
pip install --force-reinstall -U setuptools
pip install --force-reinstall -U pip
In my case, it was only an old version of pillow 3.1.1 that was having trouble (pillow 4.x worked fine), and that's now resolved!

I had this error earlier and the highest rated answer gave me an error trying to download the ez_setup.py file. I found another source so you can run the command:
curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py | python
I found that I also had to use sudo to get it working, so you may need to run:
sudo curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py | sudo python
I've also created another location that the script can be downloaded from:
https://gist.github.com/ajtrichards/42e73562a89edb1039f3

Needed a little bit more sudo. Then used easy_install to install pip. Works.
sudo wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | sudo python
sudo easy_install pip

I fixed the error with virtualenv by doing this:
Copied pkg_resources.py from
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools
to
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/
This may be a cheap workaround, but it worked for me.
.
If setup tools doesn't exist, you can try installing system-site-packages by typing virtualenv --system-site-packages /DESTINATION DIRECTORY, changing the last part to be the directory you want to install to. pkg_rousources.py will be under that directory in lib/python2.7/site-packages

the simple resoluition is that you can use conda to upgrade setuptools or entire enviroment. (Specially for windows user.)
conda upgrade -c anaconda setuptools
if the setuptools is removed, you need to install setuptools again.
conda install -c anaconda setuptools
if these all methodes doesn't work, you can upgrade conda environement. But I do not recommend that you need to reinstall and uninstall some packages because after that it will exacerbate the situation.

A lot of answers are recommending the following but if you read through the source of that script, you'll realise it's deprecated.
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | python
If your pip is also broken, this won't work either.
pip install setuptools
I found I had to run the command from Ensure pip, setuptools, and wheel are up to date, to get pip working again.
python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

You can use the command
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3-pkg-resources
if you are using python3 , this was the case with me.

I ran into this problem after installing the latest Python version 3.10.4.
Somehow, the setuptools package and pip were deleted.
I used the following command to resolve the issue :
in [Windows]
py -m ensurepip --default-pip

For me, this error was being caused because I had a subdirectory called "site"! I don't know if this is a pip bug or not, but I started with:
/some/dir/requirements.txt
/some/dir/site/
pip install -r requirements.txt wouldn't work, giving me the above error!
renaming the subfolder from "site" to "src" fixed the problem! Maybe pip is looking for "site-packages"? Crazy.

For me, it turned out to be a permissions problem on site-packages. Since it's only my dev environment, I raised the permissions and everything is working again:
sudo chmod -R a+rwx /path/to/my/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

I had this problem when I had activated my virtualenv as a different user than the one who created it. It seems to be a permission problem. I discovered this when I tried the answer by #cwc and saw this in the output:
Installing easy_install script to /path/env/bin
error: /path/env/bin/easy_install: Permission denied
Switching back to the user that created the virtualenv, then running the original pip install command went without problems. Hope this helps!

I had this problem today as well. I only got the problem inside the virtual env.
The solution for me was deactivating the virtual env, deleting and then uninstalling virtualenv with pip and reinstalling it. After that I created a new virtual env for my project, then pip worked fine both inside the virtual environment as in the normal environment.

Looks like they have moved away from bitbucket and are now on github (https://github.com/pypa/setuptools)
Command to run is:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | sudo python

If you are encountering this issue with an application installed via conda, the solution (as stated in this bug report) is simply to install setup-tools with:
conda install setuptools

On Windows, with python 3.7, this worked for me:
pip install --upgrade setuptools --user
--user installs packages in your home directory, which doesn't require admin privileges.

Apparently you're missing setuptools. Some virtualenv versions use distribute instead of setuptools by default. Use the --setuptools option when creating the virtualenv or set the VIRTUALENV_SETUPTOOLS=1 in your environment.

None of the posted answers worked for me, so I reinstalled pip and it worked!
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential
sudo easy_install pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
(reference: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2010/02/how-install-pip-ubuntu/)

In my case, I had 2 python versions installed initially and later I had deleted the older one. So while creating the virtual environment
virtualenv venv
was referring to the uninstalled python
What worked for me
python3 -m virtualenv venv
Same is true when you are trying to use pip.

I came across this answer when I was trying to follow this guide for OSX. What worked for me was, after running python get-pip, I had to ALSO easy_install pip. That fixed the issue of not being able to run pip at all. I did have a bunch of old macport stuff installed. That may have conflicted.

On windows, I installed pip downloaded from www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ then encontered this problem.
So I should have installed setuptools(easy_install) first.

just reinstall your setuptools by :
$ sudo wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz#md5=7df2a529a074f613b509fb44feefefe74e
$ tar -zxvf setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz
$ cd setuptools-0.6c11/
$ sudo python setup.py build
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools
then everything will be fine.

I use CentOS 6.7, and my python was just upgrade from 2.6.6 to 2.7.11, after tried so many different answer, finally the following one does the job:
sudo yum install python-devel
Hope help someone in the same situation.

I ran into this problem after updating my Ubuntu build. It seems to have gone through and removed set up tools in all of my virtual environments.
To remedy this I reinstalled the virtual environment back into the target directory. This cleaned up missing setup tools and got things running again.
e.g.:
~/RepoDir/TestProject$ virtualenv TestEnvironmentDir

For me a good fix was to use --no-download option to virtualenv (VIRTUALENV_NO_DOWNLOAD=1 tox for tox.)

On Opensuse 42.1 the following fixed this issue:
zypper in python-Pygments