Fixing PIP Issue in Arch Linux

Recently, I was upgrading Arch Linux on my laptop. And I encountered something unusual with pip and its libraries. Everything related to pip(and pip itself) can not be upgraded in anyways!

The problem wasn't new to me. I knew what I am doing wrong. I was using pip to install package on system-level. So, obviously, pacman was not owning it. So, the easiest solution for me was to delete files that are not owned by pacman and blocking the upgrade process. And I did! I was quite sure about this, because a while ago, I faced a similar issue for installing npm packages on system level using sudo.

Phew! Successfully installed upgrades!!

But, the issue was not completely gone! The other day, I needed python for running some scripts(with external dependency libraries). So, I needed to use pip to install package.

Now, because I deleted some files(or probably all of them) from /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages directory during the upgrade process, I was getting an error saying that, package six not found.

I tried reinstalling pip, did not work. Removed pip and installed again, did not work either. I was little bit worried by now .. lol. Because, I don't really know much about python world. Neither searching google was quite helpful. I mean, I literally knew what was wrong, and yet I couldn't do anything.

Reinstalling Everything Worked!

Yeah! It. Just. Worked!! Now, finally I can use pip instead of pip2 .. haha

To do a full system reinstall, one do it like this on Arch Linux: pacman -Qnq | sudo pacman -S -. It is safe! No worries about that.

Points to Remember

Don't use sudo to install packages with anything other than pacman.
Store pip packages in user's directory instead of any system-level locations(like /usr/lib etc)
Always use pip with the --user flag. Example: pip install <package_name> --user
lostfiles in AUR is an useful application for filtering packages not owned by pacman.

Good Day!!