Attribute Error: install_layout

November 25, 2015

With the “portable” build of PyPy 4.0.1 (and 2.6.1) installed on a Debian jessie system, I always get this when doing pip install-s on a fresh virtualenv:

File "/opt/pypy-4.0.1-linux_x86_64-portable/lib-python/2.7/distutils/cmd.py", line 302, in set_undefined_options
  getattr(src_cmd_obj, src_option))
File "/opt/pypy-4.0.1-linux_x86_64-portable/lib-python/2.7/distutils/cmd.py", line 105, in __getattr__
  raise AttributeError, attr
AttributeError: install_layout

I don’t have the fortitude to figure out precisely why, but the underlying issue is an out-of-date setuptools, so you have to do this in your virtualenv for things to work:

pip install --upgrade setuptools pip

(The setuptools is the important bit).