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        C:\Users\hp>pip install --upgrade pip
        Requirement already satisfied: pip in 
        c:\users\hp\appdata\local\programs\python\python311\lib\site-packages (23.1.2)
        Collecting pip
         Downloading pip-23.2.1-py3-none-any.whl (2.1 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2.1/2.1 MB 10.2 MB/s eta 0:00:00
        ERROR: To modify pip, please run the following command:
        C:\Users\hp\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\python.exe -m pip install -- 
       upgrade pip

        [notice] A new release of pip is available: 23.1.2 -> 23.2.1
        [notice] To update, run: python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip

I get the above message when using pip install --upgrade pip, but when I use python.exe -m pip install--upgrade pip as mentioned in the notice, pip gets upgraded.

Can anyone tell me the difference between these two commands?

Paolo
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Sriram Bharadwaj
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2 Answers2

1

pip can't update pip.exe if pip.exe is already running, so you need to use a command that avoids running the pip.exe executable to update pip itself on Windows. Unix platforms don't have this limitation.

user2357112
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    Also, as pip is a python module, it is good practice to use pip through -m even when you're not updating pip, because it ensures you act on the version of python and pip that you want (it is not uncommon to have multiple python installations on your system) – canelaguila Jul 24 '23 at 11:47
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pip install --upgrade pip: This command will attempt to upgrade pip in your currently active Python environment. If you have multiple Python installations and you're not working inside a virtual environment, it might not upgrade the pip you expect (e.g., if pip is aliased to a different Python installation).

python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip: This command will upgrade pip for the specific Python interpreter that python.exe points to. If you have multiple versions of Python installed, it's often more reliable to use this form because you can specify which Python interpreter you want to upgrade pip for by replacing python.exe with python3.8, python3.9, etc.

jsibs
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