installing tweepy on Mac using pip - error message

Question

I have recently switched laptops from Microsoft to Apple (2015 MacBook Pro) and I have been installing python libraries such as Nlkt succesfully without any issues.

Now I have been trying to install tweepy and seem to get loads of different error messages.

After trying I pip install tweepy[error message saying "invalid syntax" in my terminal] I did some research on here and tried the below solution:

import pip
>>> package_name='tweepy' 
>>> pip.main(['install',package_name])

OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/var/folders/t1/4g62trws5812jb97vvw5kp900000gn/T/pip-yabtGc-uninstall/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/six-1.4.1-py2.7.egg-info'  
2
>>>

As you can see it is still not working...

I have also tried sudo pip install tweepy, which came up with this message:

The directory '/Users/MYNAME/Library/Caches/pip' or its parent directory is not owned by the current user and caching wheels has been disabled. check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you may want sudo's -H flag.

Requirement already satisfied: tweepy in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.7.3 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: requests-oauthlib>=0.4.1 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: requests>=2.4.3 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: oauthlib>=0.6.2 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from requests-oauthlib>=0.4.1->tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: urllib3<1.22,>=1.21.1 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.3->tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: idna<2.6,>=2.5 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.3->tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: certifi>=2017.4.17 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.3->tweepy)
Requirement already satisfied: chardet<3.1.0,>=3.0.2 in ./Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.3->tweepy)

When I tried to import tweepy into idle it said "no module named tweepy"

Sorry for my longwinded explanation but I'm getting desperate...

Thank you very much for your help already!!

touch my body touch my body · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-27T21:14:19

One solution is to use virtualenv.

In short, virtualenv creates a separate python instance in a folder different from the computers' python installation. This allows for easy installation of packages and helps you manage dependencies better than installing everything globally with pip.

How do I do this?

First, install virtualenv

 $ pip install virtualenv

Next, create a virtual environment. The following command will create a python instance in a folder named "foo" in the directory you execute this from.

 $ virtualenv foo

Now, whenever you need to install something, use the pip that is located at foo/bin/pip and the python located at foo/bin/python.

 $ foo/bin/pip install tweepy

You can test this via the python interpreter:

 $ foo/bin/python
 Python 2.7.10 (default, Feb  6 2017, 23:53:20) 
 [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.34)] on darwin
 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> import tweepy

Why would you want to do this?

If you use virtualenv, you are less likely to run into dependency issues.

For example, lets say you make some python program, called ProjectAAA, which uses version 1.1 of LibraryXYZ. A couple months later you want to write a new, completely unrelated python program, ProjectZZZ, which uses version 2.2.5 of that same library. When LibraryXYZ upgraded from 1.1 to 2.2.5, they removed and renamed a few classes and functions that you used in ProjectAAA. So, if you used pip and installed to the main python instance on your Mac, you won't be able to run ProjectAAA anymore, because it depends on version 1.1 but your computer has version 2.2.5.

If you used virtualenv, you could have two separate python instances, each with their own pip and their own package installations. So the environment for ProjectAAA has version 1.1, the environment for ProjectZZZ has version 2.2.5, and both can live peacefully on your computer.

installing tweepy on Mac using pip - error message

3 Answers