Python 3 is not upgrading pip. Am I linking a wrong directory?

Question

I have the following issue every time I try to install a package in Python 3:

WARNING: You are using pip version 20.2.4; however, version 20.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the '/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command

I tried to do the upgrade pip command as follows, with the also following warning:

$ pip3 install --upgrade pip

Collecting pip
  Using cached pip-20.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.5 MB)
Installing collected packages: pip
Successfully installed pip-20.3.1
WARNING: You are using pip version 20.2.4; however, version 20.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the '/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command

I tried the other way, with the same error:

$ /usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

Collecting pip
Using cached pip-20.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.5 MB)
Installing collected packages: pip
Successfully installed pip-20.3.1
WARNING: You are using pip version 20.2.4; however, version 20.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the '/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command

I also tried the Following suggestion to solve this problem, downloading the package and ask pip to install directly from the .tar.gz file:

$sudo python3 -m pip install /home/me/Downloads/pip-20.3.1.tar.gz 

[sudo] password for me: 
Processing /home/me/Downloads/pip-20.3.1.tar.gz
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
    Preparing wheel metadata ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: pip
  Building wheel for pip (PEP 517) ... done
  Created wheel for pip: filename=pip-20.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl size=1518515 sha256=36207044a2b9042728f3cd0f971569217f4e2e9c68c84adbf5c42617e08b9d3c
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/0e/09/b2/4673e6d2eee911dbbeaeeba8e68eebb9719b1b3ba25ad93e2c
Successfully built pip
Installing collected packages: pip
  Attempting uninstall: pip
    Found existing installation: pip 20.0.2
    Not uninstalling pip at /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages, outside environment /usr
    Can't uninstall 'pip'. No files were found to uninstall.
Successfully installed pip-20.3.1

Again, the same error happens:

$pip3 install pydot

Collecting pydot
Using cached pydot-1.4.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (19 kB)
Collecting pyparsing>=2.1.4
Using cached pyparsing-2.4.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl (67 kB)
Installing collected packages: pyparsing, pydot
Successfully installed pydot-1.4.1 pyparsing-2.4.7

WARNING: You are using pip version 20.2.4; however, version 20.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the '/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command.

My Python versions are:

$python --version
Python 3.7.9

$python3 --version
Python 3.8.5

My PATH variable links the following directories:

$echo $PATH

/home/me/.local/bin:/home/me/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin

What is happening here? should I have to add something to my PATH variable in order to link the right python version to the pip upgrade command? or there is something else to be done?

Solution 1

Just do the pip3 upgrade with sudo. I think you mixed up python2 and python3 installs with your sudo call. Just tested and gave me the correct version on pip3:

$ sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
Collecting pip
  Downloading pip-20.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.5 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 1.5 MB 2.6 MB/s 
Installing collected packages: pip
  Attempting uninstall: pip
    Found existing installation: pip 20.0.2
    Not uninstalling pip at /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages, outside environment /usr
    Can't uninstall 'pip'. No files were found to uninstall.
Successfully installed pip-20.3.1
$ pip3 --version
pip 20.3.1 from /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/pip (python 3.8)

Tested on KDE Neon (Ubuntu 20.04). Also make sure you don't have another version of pip installed somewhere in the user installations. These easily get mixed up between apt and the user locations for python installs.

Solution 2

ou are using pip version 19.2.3, however version 20.3.4 is available. You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.

Comments

[mad]

It works. However, I always need to use sudo to install any pip3 package. Any workaround on this? thank you.

[FloWil]

I guess that's because you have the pip3 installed by apt and that requires root privileges to do. I would suggest to workaround this by using any form of virtualenv or virtualenv based package management like pipenv and/or poetry. These then can install any packages and dependencies per project and that should not require any root privileges. Another way may to be force the system-wide pip to install to your user-based package installation.