Attributeerror: Module 'Pkg_Resources' Has No Attribute 'Safe_Name' Oauthlib Install

I'm trying to install tweepy (and by extension oauthlib), and I'm getting the following error when attempting to install:

Collecting requests-oauthlib>=0.4.1 (from tweepy)
Using cached requests_oauthlib-0.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting oauthlib>=0.6.2 (from requests-oauthlib>=0.4.1->tweepy)
  Using cached oauthlib-2.0.0.tar.gz
Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/private/var/folders/t7/751h0y1102z99ysr6659yjcr0000gn/T/pip-build-aoklhwtw/oauthlib/setup.py", line 70, in <module>
    'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
  File "/Library/Frameworks/", line 108, in setup
    _setup_distribution = dist = klass(attrs)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/", line 263, in __init__
    self.patch_missing_pkg_info(attrs)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/", line 246, in patch_missing_pkg_info
    key = pkg_resources.safe_name(str(attrs['name'])).lower()
AttributeError: module 'pkg_resources' has no attribute 'safe_name'

Interestingly, the /private/var/folders/t7/751h0y1102z99ysr6659yjcr0000gn/T/pip-build-aoklhwtw/oauthlib/ folder does not exist, so I can t even delete that/look at it closer.

Any ideas what might cause this?

3 Answers

Found the solution. I had to upgrade setuptools, so:

$ sudo pip3 install --upgrade setuptools
3

I ran into the same error while running pip inside a virtualenv environment, however setuptools were already up-to-date in my case.

What fixed it for me

# exit the virtualenv
deactivate

# re-initialize your virtual environment (your command may differ)
virtualenv --python=python3.7 env

# activate the virtualenv again
source env/bin/activate

# re-install your dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt
James H. Sterling

James H. Sterling

Environmental Science & Climate Journalist

James Sterling reports on renewable energy developments, climate policy, ecological conservation, and green tech innovations around the globe.