pip3 error - '_NamespacePath' object has no attribute 'sort'

Question

I tried to install a package through pip3, and I got this error. Every pip/pip3 command that I run gives me this error-

alexg@hitbox:~$ pip3 -V
Traceback (m         


        

Answer 1

Yet another answer, but following is the one which eventually fixed the issue for me. Since pip was compromised I was unable to use it for upgrading itself or setuptools and also using easy_install was bringing up the same issue. So I tried to install pip using Python.

The answer:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python get-pip.py 
pip install --upgrade setuptools