Python3.7 on Windows Ubuntu Bash shell ImportError: cannot import name 'HTTPSHandler' from 'urllib.request' (/usr/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py)

Question

I've recently updated Python to version 3.7 from version 3.5, and made it the default in my bash shell. I've also updated pip and made sure it uses Python3.7.

Now, whenever I try to install any module using pip I get this error"

$pip3 install google 
Traceback (most recent call last):   File "/home/AnnaK/.local/bin/pip3", line 7, in <module>
    from pip._internal.cli.main import main   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 16, in <module>
    from pip.vcs import git, mercurial, subversion, bazaar  # noqa   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/vcs/subversion.py", line 9, in <module>
    from pip.index import Link   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 30, in <module>
    from pip.wheel import Wheel, wheel_ext   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 39, in <module>
    from pip._vendor.distlib.scripts import ScriptMaker   File "/usr/share/python-wheels/distlib-0.2.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl/distlib/scripts.py", line 14, in <module>   File "/usr/share/python-wheels/distlib-0.2.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl/distlib/compat.py", line 66, in <module> ImportError: cannot import name 'HTTPSHandler' from 'urllib.request' (/usr/lib/python3.7/urllib/request.py)

I get the same error if I try to simply run pip. This didn't happen when I was using python3.5. I did have this problem when briefly using python2.7, but I fixed it using https://askubuntu.com/questions/581999/pip-raises-importerror-cannot-import-name-httpshandler . That solution doesn't seem to work for python3.7.

I've tried to reinstall pip, reinstall python3, update my Windows Ubuntu subsystem, and reinstall libssl-dev. I'm stumped. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

You must have inadvertently upgraded your system pip (probably through something like sudo pip install pip --upgrade )

pip xx adjusts where its internals are situated. The pip3 command you're seeing is one provided by your package maintainer and is not a file managed by pip.

You can read more about this on pip's issue tracker

You'll probably want to not upgrade your system pip and instead use a virtualenv.

To recover the pip3 binary you'll need to sudo python3 -m pip uninstall pip && sudo apt install python3-pip --reinstall .

It should work fine if you use the first approach python3 -m pip ... instead of pip3 ... .