pip is apparently installed but not working

Question

As background, I am trying to back out of my anaconda distro and use pip to do my own package management. I had an old anaconda version 3.4 which I have deleted. I upgraded python to 3.5 alongside Ubuntu 16.04 and am in the process of re-installing all the rest of the packages that I use.

Here is my problem with pip, in a nutshell.

:~/Downloads$ python --version
Python 3.5.2
:~/Downloads$ python get-pip.py
Requirement already up-to-date: pip in /home/XXX/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages
:~/Downloads$ pip install -U pip
The program 'pip3' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install python3-pip
:~/Downloads$ pip install scipy
The program 'pip3' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install python3-pip

Now, the apt install pip does in fact work. But then I have myriad problems with that version of pip that I have not experienced before, foremost among which is the fact that I can't install the apt managed pip to 9.0.1 from 8.1.1. So I apt removed pip and am now back to square one.

But all that is irrelevant, I want to get pip working as is. What is going wrong with get-pip.py?

Solution

Installing pip with apt should not be the answer.

You installed PIP right, but you have to add the executable path to you PATH variable,

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

You can add this to the end of ~/.profile to make the change permanent. You may need to run source ~/.profile in a new shell, or you can log out and back in.

Comments

[kingledion]

pip is not installed. 'which pip' gives nothing, and 'pip --version' gives the same error message as seen with any other pip command. My question is why get-pip.py thinks that it has successfully installed pip yet I can't find run it.

[aidanmelen]

did you try <sudo apt install python3-pip>?

[kingledion]

I did, and I do not want to install it that way. If the pip install page says that the preferred way is to install it by running their installer, than that is what I should do. If I can't do that, something is wrong.

[aidanmelen]

i wouldn't install pip with get-pip.py when you could use apt.

[edwinksl]

To note is that new user accounts from Ubuntu 16.04 onwards would already have $HOME/.local/bin in PATH. See the last line of .profile in gist.github.com/edwinksl/….