Attributeerror: module 'importlib._bootstrap' has no attribute 'sourcefileloader'

Question

Problem :

I have installed the pip for python 3.6 on my Ubuntu 14. By using below command :

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Now to install pip3, it works very well. But after doing the installation, when I want to run it by using below command :

pip3 install packagename

When I try to install the new package, something strange occurs as below :

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 1479, in <module> register_loader-type(importlib_bootstrap.SourceFileLoader, DefaultProvider)

AttributeError: module "importlib._bootstrap" has no attribute "SourceFileLoader"

It appears that I did nothing wrong but I am really unable to figure out the reason behind the above error.

Answer 1

I had faced the similar problem in the recent past. I think this is happening simply because the  python3.6 and pip3 were installed from the different sources. So I suggest you to use the python's inbuilt facility to install the pip as follows :

python3 -m ensurepip --upgrade

This should help you in installing your pip3 and pip3.x where x in python3.x. Same works for the python2 also.

OR

 

I had the same problem in the recent past on my ubuntu 18.04 with the python 3.6. None of the above methods really helped, but below one solved my problem:

pip3 uninstall setuptools