Having a problem with easy_install on osx 10.6

Question

I've been doing some Google searches and come up short.

Output is the following

$ easy_install yolk
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/easy_install-2.6", line 10, in <module>
  load_entry_point('setuptools==0.6c9', 'console_scripts', 'easy_install')()
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 271, in load_entry_point
  return get_distribution(dist).load_entry_point(group, name)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 2174, in load_entry_point
  return ep.load()
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 1907, in load
  entry = __import__(self.module_name, globals(),globals(), ['__name__'])
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/setuptools/__init__.py", line 2, in <module>
  from setuptools.extension import Extension, Library
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/setuptools/extension.py", line 2, in <module>
  from dist import _get_unpatched
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/setuptools/dist.py", line 5, in <module>
  from setuptools.command.install import install
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/setuptools/command/install.py", line 2, in <module>
  from distutils.command.install import install as _install
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/distutils/command/install.py", line 21, in <module>
  from site import USER_BASE
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 516, in <module>
    main()
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 499, in main
known_paths = addsitepackages(known_paths)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 291, in addsitepackages
  addsitedir(sitedir, known_paths)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 185, in addsitedir
  addpackage(sitedir, name, known_paths)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 155, in addpackage
  exec line
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute '__plen'

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It seems you have a busted easy-install.pth. The easiest fix would be to nuke it out of existence; in a terminal you run:

sudo rm /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/easy-install.pth

However this will have the side effect that you must reinstall the packages you've installed with easy_install.

By the way, try pip - it doesn't suck as much.

pip is a tool for installing and managing Python packages, such as those found in the Python Package Index.

pip is a replacement for easy_install. It mostly uses the same techniques for finding packages, so packages that are easy_installable should be pip-installable as well. This means that you can use pip install SomePackage instead of easy_install SomePackage.