Python pip install fails: invalid command egg_info

Question

I find that recently often when I try to install a Python package using pip, I get the error(s) below.

I found a reference online that one has to use "python2 setup.py install" from the download directory, and indeed find that this will then work if I manually find and download the package (from pypi).

But, I don't know where pip is downloading packages to, and/or why it is failing in this manner.

I tried to do a pip upgrade, but it also failed in a similar manner, with a bunch of "Unknown distribution option" errors (entry_points, zip_safe, test_suite, tests_require)!

• pip 1.0.1
• ActivePython 2.7

Trying to use ActiveState's pypm fails, because they have a smaller library base, and it doesn't include these packages.

C:\test>pip install requests-oauth
Downloading/unpacking requests-oauth
  Downloading requests-oauth-0.4.1.tar.gz
  Running setup.py egg_info for package requests-oauth
    E:\Plang\ActivePython\lib\distutils\dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'zip_safe'
      warnings.warn(msg)
    E:\Plang\ActivePython\lib\distutils\dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'install_requires'
      warnings.warn(msg)
    usage: -c [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
       or: -c --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
       or: -c --help-commands
       or: -c cmd --help

    error: invalid command 'egg_info'
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    E:\Plang\ActivePython\lib\distutils\dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'zip_safe'
  warnings.warn(msg)

E:\Plang\ActivePython\lib\distutils\dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'install_requires'
  warnings.warn(msg)

usage: -c [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: -c --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: -c --help-commands
   or: -c cmd --help

error: invalid command 'egg_info'

Answer 1

I know this is an older question but here are the steps I used to get cassandra-driver to actually install on Windows 7 / Python2. I have windows 10 / Python3 at home where I will test this tonight. I have confirmed this also works on Windows 10 with both Python 2 and 3.

Problem

Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in c:\users\Frito\appdata\local\temp\pip-build-7dgmdc\cassandra-driver

TL;DR Solution

• Installed https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44266 (Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7)

Solution (I'd love for someone to explain why this worked)

• Attempted pip install cassandra-driver and got the above error message
• Attempted pip install --pre cassandra-driver and got the following error

distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Setup script exited with error: Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat).
Get it from http://aka.ms/vcpython27

Command "c:\users\Frito\.virtualenvs\symdash\scripts\python.exe -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='c:\\users\\Frito\\appdata\\local\\temp\\pip-build-sesxxu\\cassandra-driver\\setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record  c:\users\Frito\appdata\local\temp\pip-ujsxsk-record\install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers c:\users\Frito\.virtualenvs\symdash\include\site\python2.7\cassandra-driver"  failed with error code 1 in  c:\users\Frito\appdata\local\temp\pip-build-sesxxu\cassandra-driver

• Installed Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7
• Successfully executed pip install --pre cassandra-driver
• Successfully executed pip uninstall cassandra-driver
• Successfully executed pip install cassandra-driver

To reiterate, I'm not really sure why this worked. Right now my two leading conclusions are that either the C++ compiler is required or that running the --pre option the first time installed some dependencies that were missing from the 'regular' install. I'll update tonight after work when I have more details.

Answer 2

sudo apt-get install apache2-dev solved my problem

Answer 3

As distribute has been merged back into setuptools, it is now recommended to install/upgrade setuptools instead:

[sudo] pip install --upgrade setuptools

Answer 4

Install distribute, which comes with egg_info.

Should be as simple as pip install Distribute.

Distribute has been merged into Setuptools as of version 0.7. If you are using a version <=0.6, upgrade using pip install --upgrade setuptools or easy_install -U setuptools.

Answer 5

I had this issue, as well as some other issues with Brewed Python on OS X v10.9 (Mavericks).

sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools

didn't work for me, and I think my setuptools/distribute setup was botched.

I finally got it to work by running

sudo easy_install -U setuptools

Answer 6

pip install -U setuptools and easy_install was putting egg-info in the wrong directory.

Then I just reinstalled apt-get install python-dev. Let me install the drivers I want after that