pip: More verbose explanation why "Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement"

Environment

(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example # pip --version
pip 10.0.1 from /root/pySAML2/example/venv-test/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip (python 3.6)
(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example # python --version
Python 3.6.8
(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example # cat /etc/alpine-release 
3.9.0
(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example #

Description

I have spent hours trying to debug, what does this mean:

(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example # pip install -r requirements.txt  --index-url https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Looking in links: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Collecting mako (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/f9/93/63f78c552e4397549499169198698de23b559b52e57f27d967690811d16d/Mako-1.0.10.tar.gz (460kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 460kB 11.8MB/s 
Collecting cherrypy (from -r requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/aa/0e/4e353c47789ccb50130a44e765dae55b3e85abca01ff21930533ab36afc9/CherryPy-18.1.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0 (from -r requirements.txt (line 3))
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/7b/20/df88d00a563fe437e9e03cf1b02927b47cea2fb5ed9d696c2820c53d7657/pysaml2-4.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (335kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 337kB 18.3MB/s 
Collecting MarkupSafe>=0.9.2 (from mako->-r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/b9/2e/64db92e53b86efccfaea71321f597fa2e1b2bd3853d8ce658568f7a13094/MarkupSafe-1.1.1.tar.gz
Collecting cheroot>=6.2.4 (from cherrypy->-r requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3e/50/840039a5350b54fb8efbc3b26c6e4244c9ca24c49ad84fe1f57b1f79ff7d/cheroot-6.5.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting portend>=2.1.1 (from cherrypy->-r requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/54/18/d288ef3cfcaac40c9c3674d92ef8313bf137deeced810d60d9722c0a327a/portend-2.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting more-itertools (from cherrypy->-r requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/b3/73/64fb5922b745fc1daee8a2880d907d2a70d9c7bb71eea86fcb9445daab5e/more_itertools-7.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting zc.lockfile (from cherrypy->-r requirements.txt (line 2))
Collecting pytz (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3d/73/fe30c2daaaa0713420d0382b16fbb761409f532c56bdcc514bf7b6262bb6/pytz-2019.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting defusedxml (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/06/74/9b387472866358ebc08732de3da6dc48e44b0aacd2ddaa5cb85ab7e986a2/defusedxml-0.6.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting cryptography>=1.4 (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/07/ca/bc827c5e55918ad223d59d299fff92f3563476c3b00d0a9157d9c0217449/cryptography-2.6.1.tar.gz
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement cffi!=1.11.3,>=1.8 (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for cffi!=1.11.3,>=1.8
(venv-test) ~/pySAML2/example #

While I was able to:

Run this in a separate system (Ubuntu 16.04)
With different python3 versions
Find the required packages (on a manual https://pypi.org/simple/cffi/ search)
Arch was compatible
I was able to manually install https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/93/1a/ab8c62b5838722f29f3daffcc8d4bd61844aa9b5f437341cc890ceee483b/cffi-1.12.3.tar.gz#sha256=041c81822e9f84b1d9c401182e174996f0bae9991f33725d059b771744290774, and yet, pip was pulling my leg: [1]

(venv-example) ~/pySAML2/example # pip install -r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt --extra-index-url https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Looking in links: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Collecting mako (from -r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 1))
  Downloading https://pypi.python.org/simple//mako/Mako-1.0.10.tar.gz (460kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 460kB 143kB/s 
Collecting cherrypy (from -r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/aa/0e/4e353c47789ccb50130a44e765dae55b3e85abca01ff21930533ab36afc9/CherryPy-18.1.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0 (from -r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 3))
  Downloading https://pypi.python.org/simple//pysaml2/pysaml2-4.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (335kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 337kB 166kB/s 
Collecting MarkupSafe>=0.9.2 (from mako->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 1))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/b9/2e/64db92e53b86efccfaea71321f597fa2e1b2bd3853d8ce658568f7a13094/MarkupSafe-1.1.1.tar.gz
Collecting cheroot>=6.2.4 (from cherrypy->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3e/50/840039a5350b54fb8efbc3b26c6e4244c9ca24c49ad84fe1f57b1f79ff7d/cheroot-6.5.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting more-itertools (from cherrypy->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/b3/73/64fb5922b745fc1daee8a2880d907d2a70d9c7bb71eea86fcb9445daab5e/more_itertools-7.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting portend>=2.1.1 (from cherrypy->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/54/18/d288ef3cfcaac40c9c3674d92ef8313bf137deeced810d60d9722c0a327a/portend-2.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting zc.lockfile (from cherrypy->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 2))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/58/c2/d7c89bdad237b4b7837609172be3e8bf5630796c0020494a15b97ece8eb1/zc.lockfile-1.4.tar.gz
Collecting pyOpenSSL (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/01/c8/ceb170d81bd3941cbeb9940fc6cc2ef2ca4288d0ca8929ea4db5905d904d/pyOpenSSL-19.0.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting requests>=1.0.0 (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/51/bd/23c926cd341ea6b7dd0b2a00aba99ae0f828be89d72b2190f27c11d4b7fb/requests-2.22.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting six (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/73/fb/00a976f728d0d1fecfe898238ce23f502a721c0ac0ecfedb80e0d88c64e9/six-1.12.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting cryptography>=1.4 (from pysaml2<5.0.0,>=4.7.0->-r /root/pySAML2/example/requirements.txt (line 3))
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/07/ca/bc827c5e55918ad223d59d299fff92f3563476c3b00d0a9157d9c0217449/cryptography-2.6.1.tar.gz
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement cffi!=1.11.3,>=1.8 (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for cffi!=1.11.3,>=1.8
(venv-example) ~/pySAML2/example # pip list | grep cffi
cffi       1.12.3

Something started stricking me, when I saw a whole lot of .tar.gz instead of -?py2.?py3-?????-????.whl files getting pulled

After searching the internet without avail, I found #3969 this, and then things started falling in place as to “why” my python so forcefully resisted installing https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/5f/bf/6aa1925384c23ffeb579e97a5569eb9abce41b6310b329352b8252cee1c3/cffi-1.12.3-cp36-cp36m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl

Expected behavior

I would like to have a very precise indication as to “why” something “is not found”.

pip clearly found the version and arch it wanted, it was just not happy with the manylinux1 “tag”.

e.g. pip could’ve said:

  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement cffi!=1.11.3,>=1.8 
Versions matching requirement "!=1.11.3,>=1.8": [x,y,z, ....] # Descending, truncating if output is too large? Some basic filtering first, THEN the version requirement?
Architectures matching (x86_64): x86_64
"Python Version" matching (p36): [cp36, cp36m]
Distributions matching (linux_x86_64, any): None

How to Reproduce

Get package from ‘…’
Then run ‘…’
An error occurs.

Output

# python3 -c "import wheel.pep425tags as w; print(w.get_supported())" | tr '\n' '\0' | sed -E 's/\),/),\n/g'
[('cp36', 'cp36m', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp36', 'abi3', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp36', 'none', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp35', 'abi3', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp34', 'abi3', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp33', 'abi3', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp32', 'abi3', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('cp36', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp3', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp35', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp34', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp33', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp32', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp31', 'none', 'any'),
 ('cp30', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py3', 'none', 'linux_x86_64'),
 ('py36', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py3', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py35', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py34', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py33', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py32', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py31', 'none', 'any'),
 ('py30', 'none', 'any')]

[1]: I am considering if that would be a bug. What’s pips deal, “not” accepting a self-compiled, pre-installed depenedency? Why would it “mandatorily” need to pull it as cffi-1.12.3-cp36-cp36m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl, and not be satisfied by “just” compiling it (or having “me” jump through hoops to make it appear in pip list)?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Reactions: 15
Comments: 36 (17 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

+1 on this. I’ve been fighting this issue for the past several hours.

Installing protobuf==3.12.0 works in my back, but when I try to do it in docker using the python:3.8.3-alpine3.11 image I get Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement.

Being new to Python the current error message is not helpful at all.

samcdavid on May 16, 2020

I later found the -vvv output (https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/3642#issuecomment-407081008). However, it is awfully verbose (as suggested by the -vvv) for tracking down “one” package refusing to install.

The “only two” reasons given were the:

it is not compatible with this Python
No sources permitted for cffi

stdedos on May 23, 2019

sudo pip3 install --pre --extra-index-url developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/redist/jp/v46 tensorflow

Yea… To me, it looks like these docs are out of date; and the best folks to reach out to would be folks at NVIDIA. Sadly, I don’t know what the best channel or mechanism to do so would be.

pradyunsg on Sep 25, 2021

Getting the information correct in the book would also have helped, I guess 🙁 From what I can tell, tensorflow is a whole complicated ecosystem of its own, so you have my sympathy. As I said, though, a PR would be welcomed if there’s an improvement you think might have helped with how we report the problem.

pfmoore on Sep 24, 2021

I’m going to just close this in favour of #10421. This specific error message comes from the legacy resolver and is not going to be improved upon. The newer issue provides more relevant context toward the issue in its current state, against the current resolver implementation.

uranusjr on Oct 25, 2022

I think one of the UX issues here is that the same “Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement X” message is actually shown for two distinct scenarios:

No versions of the package exist for the specified version (ie: invalid/typoed version)
Versions of the package do exist for the specified version, but aren’t compatible in some way (eg Python version/platform/…)

…and the current message reads as though it’s saying (1) is always the case - and it requires knowing how Python packaging/PyPI/pip works to know that (2) is also a possibility.

This issue seems to be blocked on trying to come up with all the sub-permutations of scenario (2), and having precise error messages for each (eg listing Python version as the issue, and showing compatible versions).

However, I think most of the UX benefit could still be achieved via a simpler single generic message for scenario (2), that doesn’t require as many design decisions or implementing tags parsing/analysis etc, and so be quicker to implement. This could initially just be a stop-gap, but we might find it actually solves the problem well enough that we don’t need the more complex solution.

Example generic error message for (2): “Version X of the package was found, but is not compatible with the current environment. In most cases this means it requires a different Python version or Operating System.”

edmorley on Sep 28, 2022

It shows this, but only in verbose output (-vv). This is because we don’t want to report 404 errors in general - a package may only be served from a local index and not on PyPI, and we don’t want to report 404s from PyPI in a perfectly normal situation.

Generally, if you get an unexpected result (in any tool, not just pip), enabling verbose or debug output is the recommended way of seeing what’s going on, and it gives you the information you need here.

Yes, it might be possible to do better (retain the responses we got, and if we can’t find any suitable candidates, check them to see if there’s anything worth reporting). But that’s a lot of work for a relatively rare situation. A PR would be welcome, but it’s unlikely to be a priority for the pip developers in the immediate future.

pfmoore on Sep 24, 2021

Well, for a start, that URL https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/redist/jp/v46 gives a 404 for me…

pfmoore on Sep 24, 2021

We definitely want to improve this – the bit that needs discussion is how we’d improve this.

The most common case seems to be… mismatching platforms / python-requires.

pradyunsg on Sep 24, 2021

All Possible working solution added [Solved] Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement <package>

flutterq on Jun 18, 2021

I am also facing this issue but I have a workaround

wontonst on Oct 10, 2019