Why does 'pip' require “setuptools >= 0.8”

Question

When I attempt certain commands with pip, I get an error message stating that pip

“requires setuptools >= 0.8 for dist-info”

even though I have, according to yolk -l (as well as pip list), a much higher version of setuptools installed:

pip             - 1.5          - active 
...
setuptools      - 2.1          - active

Why is pip asking for a version of setuptools >= 0.8? Isn't 2.1 > 0.8; or is my installation not in fact at the version that yolk is reporting? Is there something I need to do to ensure that I in fact do have "setuptools >= 0.8"?

Answer 1

You may have more than one setuptools installed. If there is a link to lower version pip would see that one. For example python usually appears on both usr/bin and usr/local/bin, I had a similar version problem and renamed the one in usr/local/bin. if this is the case you should find out which versions are installed and rename/remove the lower version.