pip is not uninstalling packages

Question

Background

I\'m working on an academic project to (basically) analyze some \"who follows whom\" graphs and wanted to get some real data (by building

Answer 1

While Martin's solution works, as a work around, it does not provide a direct answer. Ubuntu's pip version for your Ubuntu version (12.04) is:

 python-pip (1.0-1build1)

This is also the same version for Debian Wheezy. This version has a weired bug, which causes packages not to be removed.
If you obtain pip from upstream using the script get-pip.py you will have a fixed version of pip which can remove pacakges (as of now v. 1.5.6).

update

Python's pip is really a fast moving target. So using Debian's or Ubuntu's pip is guaranteed to have bugs. Please don't use those distribution's pip. Instead install pip from upstream.

If you would like to register pip installed packages as system packages I really recommend that you also use stdeb.