Venv fails in CentOS, ensurepip missing

Question

Im trying to install a venv in python3 (on CentOS). However i get the following error:

Error: Command '['/home/cleared/Develop/test/venv/bin/python3', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

I guess there is some problem with my ensurepip...

Running python3 -m ensurepip results in

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/usr/lib64/python3.6/ensurepip/_bundled/pip-9.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl'

Looking in the /usr/lib64/python3.6/ensurepip/_bundled/ I find pip-18.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl and setuptools-40.6.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl, however no pip-9.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Running pip3 --version gives

pip 20.0.1 from /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip (python 3.6)

Why is it looking for pip-9.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl when I'm running pip 20.0.1, and why to i have pip-18.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl? And how to I fix this?

Answer 1

These versions are harcoded at the beginning of ./lib/python3.8/ensurepip/__init__.py. You can edit this file with the correct ones.

Regarding the reason of this corruption, I can only guess. I would bet on a problem during the installtion of this interpreter.

Answer 2

I would make a clean reinstall of Python (and maybe some of its dependencies as well) with your operating system's package manager (yum?).