One time workaround:
pip install --user --install-option="--prefix=" <package_name>
or
python setup.py install --user --prefix=
Note that there is no text (not even whitespace) after the =
.
Do not forget the --user
flag.
Installing multiple packages:
Create ~/.pydistutils.cfg
(or equivalent for your OS/platform) with the following contents:
[install]
prefix=
Note that there is no text (not even whitespace) after the =
.
Then run the necessary pip install --user
or python setup.py install --user
commands. Do not forget the --user
flag.
Finally, remove or rename this file. Leaving this file present will cause issues when installing Python packages system-wide (i.e., without --user
) as this user with this ~/.pydistutils.cfg
.
The cause of this issue
This appears to be an issue with both OpenSUSE and RedHat, which has lead to a bug in virtualenv on these platforms.
The error stems from a system-level distutils configuration file (in my case /usr/lib64/python2.6/distutils/distutils.cfg
) where there was this
[install]
prefix=/usr/local
Basically, this is equivalent to always running the install command as install --prefix=/usr/local
. You have to override this specification using one of the techniques above.