[Python-modules-team] Bug#751827: python-virtualenv: version of pip in virtualenvs fails to uninstall some packages

[Stefano Rivera]

Control: reassign -1 python-pip-whl
Control: found -1 python-pip-whl/1.5.6-2

> (I am unsure if this is because of interaction of pip with the virtualenv,
> so I am reporting against python-virtualenv, not python-pip. Feel free
> to reassign!)

Yeah, this is actually a pip bug.

So, it looks like the story is:
1. Debian patched setuptools/distribute to not include the Python
   version in egg-info dirs. There is no bug I can see that tracks this.
2. pip then implemented the same mangling, after un-installation trouble
   was reported in #562544.
3. pip upstream implemented a workaround, themselves
   https://github.com/pypa/pip/commit/0d60e37273c587237cd2f0678ecf19005d49cea7
   and filed #618367 about Debian's original patch.

This bug arises because the setuptools patch from 1 doesn't mangle the
name, inside a virtualenv, but the pip patch from 2 does. And the
solution in 3 was masked by the patch in 2.

So, my solution to this is to drop Debian's patch to pip.

SR

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Stefano Rivera
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