Can't Pip Upgrade.

[drcrook1]

C:\WINDOWS\system32>pip install PyYAML --upgrade
Collecting PyYAML
Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/4f/ca/5fad249c5032270540c24d2189b0ddf1396aac49b0bdc548162edcf14131/PyYAML-3.13-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl
azure-cli-appservice 0.1.31 has requirement azure-mgmt-containerregistry==1.0.1, but you'll have azure-mgmt-containerregistry 2.1.0 which is incompatible.
azure-cli-acr 2.0.23 has requirement azure-mgmt-containerregistry==1.0.1, but you'll have azure-mgmt-containerregistry 2.1.0 which is incompatible.
Installing collected packages: PyYAML
Found existing installation: PyYAML 3.12
Cannot uninstall 'PyYAML'. It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.

It would be great to have this resolved. Feel free to close if this is already solved. It would be good to have advise on how to upgrade.

[The-Compiler]

This looks more like an issue with your setup rather than PyYAML: The existing installation was installed with distutils and not pip, so pip doesn't know how to uninstall it.

[Ralnoc]

@The-Compiler -
Packages that directly implement distutils are no longer supported when attempting to uninstall in pip. (pypa/pip#5247) Additionally, the Python Software Foundation recommends that modules not leverage distutils directly, but instead use the cross-version tools developed by PYPA (specifically setuptools) https://docs.python.org/3/library/distutils.html

As a heavily used library, it is highly recommended that it be moved onto setuptools. This is going to continue to be an issue and will likely become a larger one in the future.

[webknjaz]

are no longer supported

Moreover, it wasn't really supported earlier as well. It's just that it stopped lying about being able to track package files for removal :)

[Ralnoc]

@The-Compiler -
As of setuptools 50.0.0 , not to mention the planned path for pip and setuptools, this is becoming a much bigger issue. When will setup.py be updated to leverage the current implementations for setuptools and stop leveraging distutils? This still ends up causing a lot of problems when it involves upgrading the version of pyyaml.

[The-Compiler]

@Ralnoc Note I'm not involved with PyYAML (other than contributing a deprecation warning fix), so I can't answer those questions.

[nitzmahone]

Closing this one. The original issue is unrelated to the internals of the current setup.py or pip- likely the original package was installed with easy_install, which modern versions of pip will refuse to remove. The necessary packaging changes will happen eventually, but it's not a slam-dunk for this project to go 100% native setuptools or PEP517 today, and whatever we do will likely destabilize things that have relied on this stuff working the way it has for a very long time.