Error while checking for conflicts due to a TypeError

[Mr-Nobody148]

ERROR: Error while checking for conflicts. Please file an issue on pip's issue tracker: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/new
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\install.py", line 588, in _determine_conflicts
    return check_install_conflicts(to_install)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\operations\check.py", line 111, in check_install_conflicts
    package_set, _ = create_package_set_from_installed()
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\operations\check.py", line 53, in create_package_set_from_installed
    package_set[name] = PackageDetails(dist.version, dependencies)
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\metadata\importlib\_dists.py", line 170, in version    
    return parse_version(self._dist.version)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\packaging\version.py", line 56, in parse
    return Version(version)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\packaging\version.py", line 200, in __init__
    match = self._regex.search(version)
TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object, got 'NoneType'
ERROR: Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\base_command.py", line 107, in _run_wrapper        
    status = _inner_run()
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\base_command.py", line 98, in _inner_run
    return self.run(options, args)
           ~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\req_command.py", line 71, in wrapper
    return func(self, options, args)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\install.py", line 487, in run
    installed_versions[distribution.canonical_name] = distribution.version
                                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\metadata\importlib\_dists.py", line 170, in version    
    return parse_version(self._dist.version)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\packaging\version.py", line 56, in parse
    return Version(version)
  File "C:\Users\29828\anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\packaging\version.py", line 200, in __init__
    match = self._regex.search(version)
TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object, got 'NoneType'

[notatallshaw]

If you do pip list you should see a package with a version that is empty or none. That's what causes pip to fail.

You can either:

• Manage your environment with conda only (that's how the base Anaconda environment is designed)
• Create a new conda or virtual environment and install packages into that using the latest version of pip
• Uninstall the package using conda or pip

[pradyunsg]

Thanks for filing this issue! This does look like a legit bug. Could you please do the following:

• share the command that caused this failure for you.
• attempt the same command, with PIP_DEBUG=1 set in the environment, and share the complete output of that command.

That information will make it easier to understand what exactly is going on here.

[wywarren]

I'm getting a similar issue as well in 3.11 after upgrading my pip from 24.0. This happens even when I do a pip install -r requirements.txt on an empty requirements file. This is on Windows 11.

[notatallshaw]

I'm getting a similar issue as well in 3.11 after upgrading my pip from 24.0. This happens even when I do a pip install -r requirements.txt on an empty requirements file. This is on Windows 11.

Yes, it means you have a package with an invalid version, pip 24.1 dropped supporting arbitrary strings as versions: https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/main/NEWS.rst#241-2024-06-20

Remove support for legacy versions and dependency specifiers.

Packages with non standard-compliant versions or dependency specifiers are now ignored by the resolver. Already installed packages with non standard-compliant versions or dependency specifiers must be uninstalled before upgrading them. (#12063)

You can identify the package causing the issue and take a corrective action (such as uninstalling it) as I posted earlier: #13583 (comment).

[pfmoore]

I think it's fair to say that ideally we'd provide a better error (including details of the invalid package). But it's clearly not simple to do so (otherwise we would have 🙂), so contributions would be gratefully accepted to provide such a message. In the meantime we're sorry the pip output isn't clearer...

[wywarren]

I did do a pip list earlier which showed I think all of my globally (or historically used) packages with some of them being None. This should be correct as I had mostly been using virtual environments for all of those ones. In my more recent example, I was already inside of a virtual environment when trying to use pip and was still getting the errors on an empty requirements.txt.

Is it the case that all globally listed packages need to be resolveable, even if not used, in order for this to work?

[notatallshaw]

You're going to have to provide a concrete example (pip commands and outputs), I don't follow what you mean, in a valid Python environment no package should have None listed as a version. If you are using some other tool than pip to manage that environment you may have to use that tool exclusively to manage that environment.

[wywarren]

(.venv) D:\Git\qoo_perforce>py -3.11 -m pip list
Package                  Version        Editable project location
------------------------ -------------- -----------------------------------------------------------
asgiref                  3.8.1
astroid                  3.3.11
attrs                    None
beautifulsoup4           4.12.3
black                    25.9.0
certifi                  2024.2.2
cffi                     1.16.0
charset-normalizer       None
chromedriver-binary-auto 0.3.1
chromedriver-binary-sync 0.2.2
click                    8.3.0
colorama                 None
coverage                 7.10.6
dill                     0.4.0
Django                   5.0.4
et-xmlfile               None
exceptiongroup           None
ffmpeg-python            0.2.0
future                   1.0.0
h11                      0.14.0
idna                     None
iniconfig                2.1.0
isort                    6.0.1
lxml                     5.0.1
mccabe                   0.7.0
mypy_extensions          1.1.0
openpyxl                 3.1.4
outcome                  1.3.0.post0
p4python                 2023.2.2581979
packaging                25.0
pathspec                 0.12.1
pip                      25.2
platformdirs             4.4.0
pluggy                   1.6.0
plumbum                  1.8.2
psutil                   5.9.8
pycparser                2.22
Pygments                 2.19.2
pylint                   3.3.8
pymediainfo              6.1.0
pyperclip                1.8.2
PySocks                  1.7.1
pytest                   8.4.2
pytest-cov               7.0.0
python-dateutil          None
pytokens                 0.1.10
pywin32                  306
qoo-macros               0.0.2
qoo-perforce             0.0.7          
qoo-trello               0.0.1
requests                 None
rpyc                     6.0.0
selenium                 4.21.0
setuptools               65.5.0
six                      1.16.0
sniffio                  1.3.1
sortedcontainers         2.4.0
soupsieve                2.5
sqlparse                 None
tk                       0.1.0
tomlkit                  0.13.3
trio                     None
trio-websocket           None
typing-extensions        None
tzdata                   2024.1
unicodecsv               None
urllib3                  None
wavinfo                  2.3.0
wheel                    0.45.1
wsproto                  1.2.0

Here is an example pip list output from within my virtual environment with the upgraded pip to 25.2.

A bunch of these items listed here I'm not using inside of this venv example such as even my own other custom packages like:

• qoo-macros
• qoo-trello

Regardless though, there are other ones in the list here that are showing None so I wasn't sure if it's the case that these all have to be resolved to an actual version first in order for the error to go away even though I'm not using them in this venv.

[notatallshaw]

I'm not a virtual environment expert, but my understanding is a virtual environment only has access to the global packages if you create it with --system-site-packages. You can check by looking in the pyvenv.cfg file in your virtual environment folder and looking whether the value include-system-site-packages is to true, you can also run pip list -l and see if it produces a different result as this will strictly list packages in your virtual environment.

[notatallshaw]

@wywarren also something seems quite broken about your environment, e.g.

urllib3 None

The published versions of urllib3 have never had an invalid version, so something is installing these packages with invalid metadata, could be conda or linux package manager or another package manager. Pip needs valid metadata to be able to work, otherwise you need to stick with whatever package manager you are using to install these packages, that is able to operate with invalid metadata.

[notatallshaw]

FYI the next version of pip will give a more informative exception: #13513