fix that pesky "ImportError: No module named packaging.version" problem. Or more generally, if you need to fix pip using pip, just make sure you do "python -m pip" instead of straight-up "pip".

_fix_pip_import_error.md

It can come up while installing anything really. I'm not sure exactly which versions of pip are affected, I know I had 1.5.6 and it was affected.

These examples are grabbed from my system level Python, but of course you should use a virtualenv.

  Running setup.py install for simplegeneric
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 12, in <module>
        import setuptools.version
      File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools/version.py", line 1, in <module>
        import pkg_resources
      File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 70, in <module>
        import packaging.version
    ImportError: No module named packaging.version
    Complete output from command /usr/bin/python -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/private/tmp/pip_build_root/simplegeneric/setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-jLBBW0-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile:
    Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>

  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 12, in <module>

    import setuptools.version

  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/setuptools/version.py", line 1, in <module>

    import pkg_resources

  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 70, in <module>

    import packaging.version

ImportError: No module named packaging.version

OK, right, so you try upgrading setuptools or pip. But chicken and egg...

$ sudo pip install -U pip
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/pip", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 70, in <module>
    import packaging.version
ImportError: No module named packaging.version

Here you go. python -m pip not just pip. Heh.

$ sudo python -m pip install -U pip
Downloading/unpacking pip from https://pypi.python.org/packages/b6/ac/7015eb97dc749283ffdec1c3a88ddb8ae03b8fad0f0e611408f196358da3/pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl#md5=297dbd16ef53bcef0447d245815f5144
  Downloading pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.3MB): 1.3MB downloaded
Installing collected packages: pip
  Found existing installation: pip 1.5.6
    Uninstalling pip:
      Successfully uninstalled pip
Successfully installed pip
Cleaning up...

You likely need to upgrade setuptools too, and you can now that your pip is working.

fix_pip.sh

# virtualenv
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools

# system level
sudo python -m pip install --upgrade pip
sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools

it's working. Thanks. 👍

The solution is working for me. Thanks!

Its is working fine. Thanks!

Thank you 👍

It works. Thank you!

thanks

thank you from 2021

Another thank you from 2021

I found your gist while having an issue running borg backup installed via pkgsrc on Illumos (OmniOS), same error message about missing packaging module. In my case, it wasn't complicated, the module just isn't included by default on this platform apparently.

$ pip3.9 install packaging

"pip install packaging" worked for me

run the above command in the folder path '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7'

In 2022, packaging worked where other methods failed.
pip install packaging

OmniOS is very specific because it has like 3 package managers :/