Error installing virtualenvwrapper

Question

I'm getting the error shown below trying to install virtualenvwrapper. What am I doing wrong?

I'm using Mac OSX. I'm installing using pip as sudo. I also get the same error if I use pip without the sudo

Last login: Tue Aug 22 09:45:59 on ttys001
John:~ tcl$ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
Password:
The directory '/Users/tcl/Library/Caches/pip/http' or its parent directory is not owned by the current user and the cache has been disabled. Please check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you may want sudo's -H flag.
The directory '/Users/tcl/Library/Caches/pip' or its parent directory is not owned by the current user and caching wheels has been disabled. check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you may want sudo's -H flag.
Collecting virtualenvwrapper
  Downloading virtualenvwrapper-4.7.2.tar.gz (90kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 92kB 1.2MB/s 
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper)
Requirement already satisfied: virtualenv-clone in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from virtualenvwrapper)
Collecting stevedore (from virtualenvwrapper)
  Downloading stevedore-1.25.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Requirement already satisfied: pbr!=2.1.0,>=2.0.0 in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages (from stevedore->virtualenvwrapper)
Collecting six>=1.9.0 (from stevedore->virtualenvwrapper)
  Downloading six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: six, stevedore, virtualenvwrapper
  Found existing installation: six 1.4.1
    DEPRECATION: Uninstalling a distutils installed project (six) has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. This is due to the fact that uninstalling a distutils project will only partially uninstall the project.
    Uninstalling six-1.4.1:
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 342, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_set.py", line 778, in install
    requirement.uninstall(auto_confirm=True)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_install.py", line 754, in uninstall
    paths_to_remove.remove(auto_confirm)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/req/req_uninstall.py", line 115, in remove
    renames(path, new_path)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 267, in renames
    shutil.move(old, new)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 302, in move
    copy2(src, real_dst)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 131, in copy2
    copystat(src, dst)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 103, in copystat
    os.chflags(dst, st.st_flags)
OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/tmp/pip-TtCbYs-uninstall/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/six-1.4.1-py2.7.egg-info'
John:~ tcl$ 

I'm not seeing this specific error in Google.

I do get a lot of results searching for the less specific query:

"sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper" error

However these results have a variety of solutions (workarounds) that I'm not sure are appropriate for my current problem.

Answer 1

I ran into this exact problem sometime back. The following 2 steps solved the problem:

1. Use -H flag with sudo command

2. Ignore the installation of "six" package like this

   pip install virtualenvwrapper --ignore-installed six

Hope this helps. On a different note, it would be better to install it through Brew package manager.

Answer 2

I think it's already covered here.

I don't want to sound harsh or obnoxious, but this question is easily googled and it has been answered time and time again all over the web and on StackOverflow.