Pip doesn't install latest available version from pypi (argparse in this case)
The problem
I worked on some python projects lately and had lots of problems with pip not installing the latest versions of some requirements. I am on osx and and I used brew to install Python 2.7.6. In the project I'm working on, we simply pip install -r requirements.txt. In the current case, I needed to install argparse==1.2.1. This is the actual latest version shown on the pypi website
Here's my output
Downloading/unpacking argparse==1.2.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 4))
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement argparse==1.2.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 4)) (from versions: 0.1.0, 0.2.0, 0.3.0, 0.4.0, 0.5.0, 0.6.0, 0.7.0, 0.8.0, 0.9.0, 0.9.1, 1.0.1, 1.0, 1.1)
Some externally hosted files were ignored (use --allow-external to allow).
Cleaning up...
No distributions matching the version for argparse==1.2.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 4))
I had similar problems with different kinds of requirements such as matplotlib which I installed manually as seen here.
As you can see, pip on my mac only has those argparse versions: 0.1.0, 0.2.0, 0.3.0, 0.4.0, 0.5.0, 0.6.0, 0.7.0, 0.8.0, 0.9.0, 0.9.1, 1.0.1, 1.0, 1.1
Attempts to fix
I tried reinstalling python with brew reinstall python, then also tried to reinstall all of my installed python packages with some xargs magic: pip freeze | xargs -I {} sudo pip install {} --upgrade --force-reinstall.
While trying to reinstall everything, I had trouble with most of the packages: error: invalid command 'egg_info'. I figured out I had an old setuptools so I pip install --upgrade setuptools and I could now reinstall everything, but still, same problem with argparse. Still the same problem with argparse.
I asked a friend with a freshly installed osx to pip install argparse and he got 1.1 So I've setup a precise32 vagrant box for a clean ubuntu install with python-dev + libevent-dev and had no trouble at all installing argparse==1.2.1.
Temp fix
To continue working on the project, I installed argparse 1.1 on osx and it seems to work fine atm for what I'm working on.
Questions
I'm not very good with pypi (yet), but is-there any reason why I'm not getting the latest versions shown on pypi? Sounds like not all the libs on pypi are available for osx. Is there a way to know version availability for different os?
Edit: solution inside
argparse 1.1 seems to be the same as 1.2.1 as shown on this output
vagrant@precise32:~$ python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Sep 26 2013, 20:08:41)
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import argparse
>>> argparse.__version__
'1.1'
>>> quit()
vagrant@precise32:~$ pip freeze | grep argparse
argparse==1.2.1
I tried to use --allow-external on osx, but did not realize it needed the name of the package again.
sudo pip install argparse --allow-external argparse --upgrade
and voilà :)
argparse an externally hosted file and may be unreliable
Downloading/unpacking argparse from http://argparse.googlecode.com/files/argparse-1.2.1.tar.gz#md5=2fbef8cb61e506c706957ab6e135840c
Downloading argparse-1.2.1.tar.gz (69kB): 69kB downloaded
As pointed out by Peter, latest version of pip default to disallowing externally hosted files.
Answer
I think this line is the key:
Some externally hosted files were ignored (use --allow-external to allow).
When I install argparse here I get
You are installing an externally hosted file. Future versions of pip will default to disallowing externally hosted files.
Downloading argparse-1.2.1.tar.gz (69kB): 69kB downloaded
So you have a newer version of pip that is disallowing externally hosted files by default