How to uninstall editable packages with pip (installed with -e)

131
votes

I have installed some packages with -e

> pip install -e git+https://github.com/eventray/horus.git@2ce62c802ef5237be1c6b1a91dbf115ec284a619#egg=horus-dev

I with pip freeze I see

> pip freeze
...
-e git+https://github.com/eventray/horus.git@2ce62c802ef5237be1c6b1a91dbf115ec284a619#egg=horus-dev
...

when I try to uninstall the packages I get errors:

> pip uninstall horus-dev
Cannot uninstall requirement horus-dev, not installed

> pip uninstall horus
Cannot uninstall requirement horus, not installed

How do I uninstall such a package?

6
pipuninstallation
pip uninstall <package> uninstalls packages installed in the editable mode in recent versions of pip (mine is 19.1.1). Make sure to use the package name in setup.py, not the alias you specify to call that package in entry_points – picmate 涅
for people using conda, to uninstall in dev mode in conda do: conda develop -u . – Charlie Parker
Did you figure out why pip uninstall yourpackage did not work? Like what your errors mean? Seems odd output from the command... – Charlie Parker
Did you try pip uninstall -e . or python setup.py develop -u? – Charlie Parker
For me pip uninstall library worked just fine. If you go to the answer the OP provided it seems it's something weird with his library that was corrupted. Hopefully this saves people time next time they come here. Though, there are many different options that might work. – Charlie Parker

6 Answers

98
votes

At {virtualenv}/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ (if not using virtualenv then {system_dir}/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/)

  • remove the egg file (e.g. distribute-0.6.34-py2.7.egg) if there is any
  • from file easy-install.pth, remove the corresponding line (it should be a path to the source directory or of an egg file).
36
votes

An easier way to do the same with the new version of setup_tools is to run the following:

python setup.py develop -u

Which basically does the same as what @glarrain describes in his answer.

20
votes

Install a dev package use cmd: 

pip install --editable .

Uninstall:

rm -r $(find . -name '*.egg-info')

Now you can use: 

pip uninstall package_name

or python setup.py develop --uninstall or python setup.py develop -u

5
votes

It turns out that my installation was somehow corrupt.

I could find the entry in:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/easy-install.pth

To solve the problem I removed the line in the .pth file by hand!

import sys; sys.__plen = len(sys.path)
...
/absolute-path-to/horus  # <- I removed this line
...
5
votes

This is a bug on debian/ubuntu linux using OS-installed pip (v8.1.1 for me), which is what you'll invoke with sudo pip even if you've upgraded pip (e.g. get-pip.py). See https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4438

For a discussion on how to clean up see https://askubuntu.com/questions/173323/how-do-i-detect-and-remove-python-packages-installed-via-pip, though the solutions there are of the "remove everything" variety.

...pip packages [go] to /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages, and apt packages to /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages

...a few packages were installed in ~/.local/lib too.

For my system all I needed to remove was /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/{package_name}.egg-link

4
votes

Simply uninstall the package you installed in 'editable' mode:

pip uninstall yourpackage

it works for recent pip-versions (at least >=19.1.1).