Error while installing with Python “pip”: Cannot fetch index base URL http://

Question

I am trying to install a local version of ScrumDo for testing. Only then I come to the point in my installation that I have to run:

source bin/activate <

Answer 1

If you've tried installing a package with pip recently, you may have encountered this error:

Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: 
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/ when looking for download links for Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: 
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/ when looking for download links for Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/1.5.1: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: 
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/1.5.1 when looking for download links for Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: 
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/Django/ when looking for download links for Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
No distributions at all found for Django==1.5.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
Storing complete log in /Users/paul/.pip/pip.log

This seems to be an issue with an old version of OpenSSL being incompatible with pip 1.3.1. If you're using a non-stock Python distribution (notably EPD 7.3), you're very likely to have a setup that isn't going to work with pip 1.3.1 without a shitload of work.

The easy workaround for now, is to install pip 1.2.1, which does not require SSL:

curl -o https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pip/pip-1.2.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz pip-1.2.1.tar.gz
cd pip-1.2.1
python setup.py install

If you are using EPD, and you're not using it for a class where things might break, you may want to consider installing the new incarnation: Enthought Canopy. I know they were aware of the issues caused by the previous version of OpenSSL, and would imagine they are using a new version now that should play nicely with pip 1.3.1.