7 Aug 2020

pipenv: ImportError: No module named 'virtualenv.seed.via_app_data'

I’ve been trying to install pipenv on a new computer and ran into a frustrating issue. After installing pipenv using pip, I tried to run the command below:

$ /home/markhneedham/.local/bin/pipenv shell
Creating a virtualenv for this project…
Pipfile: /tmp/Pipfile
Using /usr/bin/python3.8 (3.8.2) to create virtualenv…
⠙ Creating virtual environment...ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'virtualenv.seed.via_app_data'

✘ Failed creating virtual environment

[pipenv.exceptions.VirtualenvCreationException]:
Failed to create virtual environment.

Hmmm, for some reason it’s unable to find one of the virtualenv modules. I found a GitHub issue on the virtualenv repository, which suggested the following:

It’s a conflict between two existing virtualenv installation. You might have installed latest version, however if in the same python you also have an old version installed this error will pop up. Maybe you have a user and system installation in parallel.

I uninstalled pipenv:

$ pip3 uninstall pipenv
Found existing installation: pipenv 2020.6.2
Uninstalling pipenv-2020.6.2:
  Would remove:
    /home/markhneedham/.local/bin/pipenv
    /home/markhneedham/.local/bin/pipenv-resolver
    /home/markhneedham/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pipenv-2020.6.2.dist-info/*
    /home/markhneedham/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pipenv/*
Proceed (y/n)? y
  Successfully uninstalled pipenv-2020.6.2

And then thought I should check if there was anything left in the ~/.local/bin directory:

$ ls -alh /home/markhneedham/.local/bin/
total 16K
drwxrwxr-x 2 markhneedham markhneedham 4.0K Aug  7 11:27 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 markhneedham markhneedham 4.0K Aug  7 11:19 ..
-rwxrwxr-x 1 markhneedham markhneedham  238 Aug  7 11:19 virtualenv
-rwxrwxr-x 1 markhneedham markhneedham  214 Aug  7 11:19 virtualenv-clone

virtualenv is still there! I thought it would have been removed when I uninstalled pipenv, but perhaps it was installed separately when I installed something else, I’m not sure.

Anyway, let’s get rid of virtualenv:

$ pip3 uninstall virtualenv
Found existing installation: virtualenv 20.0.30
Uninstalling virtualenv-20.0.30:
  Would remove:
    /home/markhneedham/.local/bin/virtualenv
    /home/markhneedham/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/virtualenv-20.0.30.dist-info/*
    /home/markhneedham/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/virtualenv/*
Proceed (y/n)? y
  Successfully uninstalled virtualenv-20.0.30

And now we’ll install pipenv again:

$ pip3 install pipenv
Collecting pipenv
  Using cached pipenv-2020.6.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (3.9 MB)
Requirement already satisfied: setuptools>=36.2.1 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from pipenv) (45.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pip>=18.0 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from pipenv) (20.0.2)
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv-clone>=0.2.5 in /home/markhneedham/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from pipenv) (0.5.4)
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from pipenv) (20.0.17)
Requirement already satisfied: certifi in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from pipenv) (2019.11.28)
Installing collected packages: pipenv
  WARNING: The scripts pipenv and pipenv-resolver are installed in '/home/markhneedham/.local/bin' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
Successfully installed pipenv-2020.6.2

And now let’s try to create a virtual environment:

$ pipenv shell
Creating a virtualenv for this project…
Pipfile: /tmp/Pipfile
Using /usr/bin/python3.8 (3.8.2) to create virtualenv…
⠹ Creating virtual environment...created virtual environment CPython3.8.2.final.0-64 in 161ms
  creator CPython3Posix(dest=/home/markhneedham/.local/share/virtualenvs/tmp-XVr6zr33, clear=False, global=False)
  seeder FromAppData(download=False, pkg_resources=latest, idna=latest, distlib=latest, contextlib2=latest, requests=latest, distro=latest, retrying=latest, certifi=latest, urllib3=latest, ipaddr=latest, webencodings=latest, pip=latest, wheel=latest, setuptools=latest, pep517=latest, colorama=latest, html5lib=latest, msgpack=latest, six=latest, packaging=latest, lockfile=latest, pyparsing=latest, progress=latest, chardet=latest, CacheControl=latest, appdirs=latest, pytoml=latest, via=copy, app_data_dir=/home/markhneedham/.local/share/virtualenv/seed-app-data/v1.0.1.debian)
  activators BashActivator,CShellActivator,FishActivator,PowerShellActivator,PythonActivator,XonshActivator

✔ Successfully created virtual environment!
Virtualenv location: /home/markhneedham/.local/share/virtualenvs/tmp-XVr6zr33
Creating a Pipfile for this project…
Launching subshell in virtual environment…
 . /home/markhneedham/.local/share/virtualenvs/tmp-XVr6zr33/bin/activate
markhneedham@markhneedham-Precision-5550:/tmp$  . /home/markhneedham/.local/share/virtualenvs/tmp-XVr6zr33/bin/activate

Success!

About the author

I'm currently working on short form content at ClickHouse. I publish short 5 minute videos showing how to solve data problems on YouTube @LearnDataWithMark. I previously worked on graph analytics at Neo4j, where I also co-authored the O'Reilly Graph Algorithms Book with Amy Hodler.