PIP module has no attribute "main"

Question

EDIT: The computer in question was a client machine with restrictions on what software could be installed. I'm unsure if that may have been a cause of the issue or if the client's IT department gave the machine a corrupted version of pip. The recommended answers below probably would have worked but were blocked by the company's IT department and required admin login to do. I have since left that project and hope to avoid similar situations.

I'm attempting to install a WHL file

While attempting to run:

import pip
my_path = <a path to the WHL file>
pip.main(['install', my_path])

I received an Attribute error:

'module' object has no attribute 'main'

I ran help(pip) and

__main__

was listed as a package content.

I'm running Python 3.4 in the console.

What version of pip do you have? May be worthwhile to run `pip install --upgrade pip` to make sure you have the most recent version. — Christopher Apple, Apr 13 '17 at 18:26
@ChristopherApple When running `pip install` in Powershell I received: `ImportError: cannot import name 'main'` — DCUFan7, Apr 14 '17 at 14:51
Seems like there is some problem with your pip install. Maybe try `easy_install pip` or `easy_install --upgrade pip` — Christopher Apple, Apr 18 '17 at 21:19

Alexey ALERT Rubasheff · Answer 1 · 2019-11-24T14:22:51.050

26

they made a refactoring. you can support both 9 and 10 pip by using:

try:
    from pip import main as pipmain
except:
    from pip._internal.main import main as pipmain

and then use pipmain as you used pip.main. for example

pipmain(['install', "--upgrade", "pip"])
pipmain(['install', "-q", "package"])

edited Nov 24 '19 at 14:22

answered Apr 16 '18 at 09:24

Alexey ALERT Rubasheff

365
3
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Any ideas on "TypeError: 'module' object is not callable" with this solution? – NealWalters Nov 23 '19 at 20:31
it seems pip has updated the code structure. I edited my comment: from pip._internal.main import main as pipmain – Alexey ALERT Rubasheff Nov 24 '19 at 14:23

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '18 at 01:38

11

easy_install --upgrade pip worked for me.

answered Jan 20 '18 at 01:38

coding_idiot

13,526
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score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 21 '18 at 13:23

9

My issue was related to my IDE (PyCharm). older versions of PyCharm does not support pip v10. Upgrading PyCharm solved it for me.

answered Apr 21 '18 at 13:23

Anders Larsen

600
7
13

Can you please specify which version of PyCharm you did use to solve this problem – kayas Jun 30 '18 at 00:01

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 18 '18 at 10:02

For more recent versions of pip (pip>=10.0.0), the functionality described in the other answers will no longer work. I recommend running the pip with subprocess as follows:

import subprocess
import sys

my_path = <a path to the WHL file>
command_list = [sys.executable, "-m", "pip", "install", my_path]
with subprocess.Popen(command_list, stdout=subprocess.PIPE) as proc:
    print(proc.stdout.read())

This solution uses the current python executable to run the pip command as a commandline command. It was inspired by the solution mentioned here.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 24 '20 at 00:45

1

From pip 20.0.0, it's:

from pip._internal.cli.main import main as pipmain

answered Jan 24 '20 at 00:45

bryant1410

5,540
4
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PIP module has no attribute "main"

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