"pip install" broken on Python for Windows when installing opts module

Question

I'm getting errors chain when I try to install opts on Python's own pip script at Python34 folder. Somehow it can't manage to install.

Trying opts:

----------------------------------->>>
Downloading/unpacking opts
  Downloading opts-0.1.1.tar.gz
  Running setup.py (path:C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_user\opts\setup.py) egg_info for package opts
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 17, in <module>
      File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_user\opts\setup.py", line 3, in <module>
        from distribute_setup import use_setuptools
    ImportError: No module named 'distribute_setup'
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 17, in <module>

  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_user\opts\setup.py", line 3, in <module>

    from distribute_setup import use_setuptools

ImportError: No module named 'distribute_setup'

----------------------------------------
Cleaning up...
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_user\opts
Storing debug log for failure in C:\Users\user\pip\pip.log

Me trying to install distribute_setup:

 ---------->

C:\Python34\Scripts>pip install distribute_setup
Downloading/unpacking distribute-setup
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement distribute-setup
Cleaning up...
No distributions at all found for distribute-setup
Storing debug log for failure in C:\Users\user\pip\pip.log

The pip.log file:

 ---------->
C:\Python34\Scripts\pip run on 08/17/19 02:17:45
Downloading/unpacking distribute-setup
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/: 404 Client Error: Not Found
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/ when looking for download links for distribute-setup
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  URLs to search for versions for distribute-setup:
  * https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/: 404 Client Error: Not Found
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute_setup/ when looking for download links for distribute-setup
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement distribute-setup
Cleaning up...
  Removing temporary dir C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_user...
No distributions at all found for distribute-setup
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 1177, in prepare_files
    url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 277, in find_requirement
    raise DistributionNotFound('No distributions at all found for %s' % req)
pip.exceptions.DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for distribute-setup

Answer 1

pip install is somehow broken[.]

This seems unlikely.

I get the same errors in both Python 2.7.16 and Python 3.x with relatively current versions of pip (pip version 18.x and pip version 19.x. respectively). And pip works normally otherwise for me.

What seems more likely is that opts is an old module and is using outdated references and instructions in its scripts, which are causing errors.

Regarding age, consider that opts was released in 2010, along with Python 2.7 and that currently official support for Python 2.7 is scheduled to end in January 2020.

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As a suggestion, if this isn't merely a support module for an existing script, you should look into possibly using something other than opts. One option might be Python's own argparse library.

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