Why is “pip install tornado” not installing the tornado module?

Question

I am trying to install tornado onto my virtual environment, so I can get Jupyter to work. I tried pip install tornado and it seems like it runs but it only installs other modules. I even tried to uninstall tornado and then try to reinstall it, but since it doesn't exist, I can't even uninstall it.

Is there a way to install tornado so I can see it? I feel like I've tried everything. Any advice?

Edit1: I should mention, updating pip did nothing.

The shell output below is me setting up virtual environment and activating it

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ virtualenv venv
New python executable in venv/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in venv/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ . venv/bin/activate

Then we look at the modules installed with pip list

(venv)[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ pip list
You are using pip version 6.0.8, however version 8.1.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.
pip (6.0.8)
setuptools (12.0.5)

Next, we pip install tornado (and make sure we re-download it in case it lives in the cache):

(venv)[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ pip install tornado --no-cache-dir
You are using pip version 6.0.8, however version 8.1.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.
Collecting tornado
  Downloading tornado-4.3.tar.gz (450kB)
    100% |################################| 454kB 27.6MB/s
Collecting backports.ssl-match-hostname (from tornado)
  Downloading backports.ssl_match_hostname-3.5.0.1.tar.gz
Collecting singledispatch (from tornado)
  Downloading singledispatch-3.4.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting certifi (from tornado)
  Downloading certifi-2016.2.28-py2.py3-none-any.whl (366kB)
    100% |################################| 368kB 28.2MB/s
Collecting backports-abc>=0.4 (from tornado)
  Downloading backports_abc-0.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting six (from singledispatch->tornado)
  Downloading six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: six, backports-abc, certifi, singledispatch, backports.ssl-match-hostname, tornado




  Running setup.py install for backports.ssl-match-hostname
  Running setup.py install for tornado
    building 'tornado.speedups' extension
    gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic -D_GNU_SOURCE -fPIC -fwrapv -DNDEBUG -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic -D_GNU_SOURCE -fPIC -fwrapv -fPIC -I/usr/include/python2.7 -c tornado/speedups.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/tornado/speedups.o
    gcc -pthread -shared build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/tornado/speedups.o -L/usr/lib64 -lpython2.7 -o build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/tornado/speedups.so
Successfully installed backports-abc-0.4 backports.ssl-match-hostname-3.5.0.1 certifi-2016.2.28 singledispatch-3.4.0.3 six-1.10.0 tornado

Double checking with pip list and we still do not see tornado

(venv)[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ pip list
You are using pip version 6.0.8, however version 8.1.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.
backports-abc (0.4)
backports.ssl-match-hostname (3.5.0.1)
certifi (2016.2.28)
pip (6.0.8)
setuptools (12.0.5)
singledispatch (3.4.0.3)
six (1.10.0)

And of course, since we can't see it, we can't uninstall it.

(venv)[ec2-user@ip-172-31-51-121 ~]$ pip uninstall tornado
You are using pip version 6.0.8, however version 8.1.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.
Cannot uninstall requirement tornado, not installed

Answer 1

upgrade your pip first, try this one

pip install -U wheel

OR

pip install -U wheel
pip install tornado

For info visit github github issue link , here you can raise the issue also.

Answer 2

My guess is that you are using an older version of virtualenv that does not support lib64, which Tornado needs. This should be fixed up upgrading virtualenv.