easy_install command is missing

[Nick Jones]

Description: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Release: 18.04

Package: python-setuptools
Version: 39.0.1-2

This package installs the easy_install module, but the command is missing:

deploy@controller0:~$ which easy_install
deploy@controller0:~$ echo $?
1

[Nick Jones (yankcrime)]

The changelog for this package states that it the easy_install scripts were removed, as of:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-setuptools/39.0.1-2

No rationale is given for the removal, or any suggestion of what users should be expected to do instead.

[Sebastian Potthoff (sebpo)]

I am affected by this as well. Using EasyBuild which relies on easy_install command during its installation problem. In 17.10 the cmd is still there. Worked around it by copying the easy_install cmd from 17.10 (its actually just a short python script) and putting it into the path. This works for me, but it is still weird that it is missing. Also installed setuptools just via pip. Same thing. Did they make some changes to setuptools?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Noam Davida (noamda)]

Guys we need this as well, please update

[Cody Lee (codrcodz)]

Having `easy_install` available (or something similar) is likely an ongoing need for at least one reason. If a user wants their system to stay on the latest/upstream version of pip, one sensible way of doing this is to install the `python-setuptools` package and use `easy_install` to install `pip` straight from PyPi, and then from that point forward use `pip install -U pip` to keep it up to date.

[Jeff Geerling (geerlingguy)]

This affects me as well; there are a number of build tools and test environments I maintain and/or use which assume the availability of easy_install if python-setuptools is installed.

Outside of this issue, the only helpful documentation I could find was on Stack Exchange: https://askubuntu.com/a/1052682/88829

The Bionic package even states (ref: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+source/python-setuptools):

> The setuptools project also includes the widely used easy_install application for downloading and installing Python packages.

...which would seem to indicate easy_install should be available after installing the package.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That has been reported to Debian as well, https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=896652

[Knickers Brown (metta-crawler)]

Work-around

pip install --user setuptools

then set $PATH to include ~/.local/bin