Why is pip installing different binaries for the same version of the same package?

Question

I'm trying to use pytaglib.

If I install it through the root account in the system-wide directory (/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages), it installs pytaglib-1.43.dist-info and a binary taglib.so.

If I create a virtual environment for a user account, it installs version pytaglib-1.43.dist-info and a binary taglib.so in the appropriate virtual-env directory. But the contents of pytaglib-1.43.dist-info are different (there are a few missing files), and the binary is of a different size.

What accounts for this difference? I do not use pip very much, and neither the root account nor the user account has a .pip directory. I haven't explicitly changed any pip settings for either.

Answer 1

pip was using a cached wheel link in /root/.cache/pip/wheels. When I deleted it, the next install fetched the package from a repository and rebuilt it. Solved.

And from now on I will disable the cache .