Error No module named pkg resources

Question

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

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

This error occur 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

Hope it helps!!

Thank You!