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Q&A Why does Pip display "error: externally-managed-environment", and what can I do about it?

tl;dr: There's a few ways to bypass this: For all users on the machine: Get rid of /usr/lib/python3.foo/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED. To prevent your package manager from adding it back, replace it with a...

posted 7d ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 4d ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
#4: Post edited by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-06-28T22:51:31Z (4 days ago)
  • There's a few ways to bypass this silliness:
  • * For all users on the machine: Get rid of `/usr/lib/python3.foo/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED`. To prevent your package manager from adding it back, replace it with a dummy/empty file. (you'll have to do this again for every minor Python version)
  • * For your user only: Create or edit `~/.config/pip/pip.conf` so that it contains:
  • ```
  • [global]
  • break-system-packages = true
  • ```
  • * For one shell session: Set the environment variable `PIP_BREAK_SYSTEM_PACKAGES=1` (you can configure your shell to always set this)
  • * For one command only: Pass `--break-system-packages` to pip.
  • Why?
  • A few years ago, Python devs decided that simply installing packages with `pip install foo` is bad and evil. So now they want you to wait for your distro to repackage it (for example, instead of `pip install requests` you're supposed to do [`pacman -S python-requests`](https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/python-requests/)), or create a venv and install everything in there.
  • I won't reproduce the Python devs' rationale here; it is readily available in PEP 668 and other answers here. But if you want to follow the spirit of their decision with less inconvenience, your best bet is probably to create a new (non-system) Python with https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv and make that the default for your shell.
  • **tl;dr:** There's a few ways to bypass this:
  • * For all users on the machine: Get rid of `/usr/lib/python3.foo/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED`. To prevent your package manager from adding it back, replace it with a dummy/empty file. (you'll have to do this again for every minor Python version)
  • * For your user only: Create or edit `~/.config/pip/pip.conf` so that it contains:
  • ```
  • [global]
  • break-system-packages = true
  • ```
  • * For one shell session: Set the environment variable `PIP_BREAK_SYSTEM_PACKAGES=1` (you can configure your shell to always set this)
  • * For one command only: Pass `--break-system-packages` to pip.
  • (there used to be some thoughts here on why this has become necessary in recent years, but it proved controversial and I removed it)
#3: Post undeleted by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-06-28T22:50:19Z (4 days ago)
#2: Post deleted by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-06-28T22:33:07Z (4 days ago)
#1: Initial revision by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-06-25T20:40:20Z (7 days ago)
There's a few ways to bypass this silliness:

* For all users on the machine: Get rid of `/usr/lib/python3.foo/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED`. To prevent your package manager from adding it back, replace it with a dummy/empty file. (you'll have to do this again for every minor Python version)
* For your user only: Create or edit `~/.config/pip/pip.conf` so that it contains:
    ```
    [global]
    break-system-packages = true
    ```
* For one shell session: Set the environment variable `PIP_BREAK_SYSTEM_PACKAGES=1` (you can configure your shell to always set this)
* For one command only: Pass `--break-system-packages` to pip.

Why?

A few years ago, Python devs decided that simply installing packages with `pip install foo` is bad and evil. So now they want you to wait for your distro to repackage it (for example, instead of `pip install requests` you're supposed to do [`pacman -S python-requests`](https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/python-requests/)), or create a venv and install everything in there.

I won't reproduce the Python devs' rationale here; it is readily available in PEP 668 and other answers here. But if you want to follow the spirit of their decision with less inconvenience, your best bet is probably to create a new (non-system) Python with https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv and make that the default for your shell.