pip may break in the next major version

[nilslindemann]

Good evening,

There is an issue with the latest pip (version 23.3 here) and devscripts:

DEPRECATION: devscripts 2.22.1ubuntu1 has a non-standard version number. pip 24.0 will enforce this behaviour change. A possible replacement is to upgrade to a newer version of devscripts or contact the author to suggest that they release a version with a conforming version number. Discussion can be found at pypa/pip#12063

So, in the next major version of pip things are going to break.

There is a fix available.

However, pip install devscripts --upgrade will not work. It will not upgrade the right package, but instead will install another unrelated one.

sudo apt install --only-upgrade devscripts is probably the right thing to do, but on Linux Mint it currently does not upgrade to the fix. The latest version is still 2.22.1ubuntu1.

A temporary radical "solution" is to downgrade pip: pip install pip==23.1.2. To then disable the upgrade checks, add export PIP_DISABLE_PIP_VERSION_CHECK=1 to your .bashrc. See also here. If during this process you get a warning There was an error checking the latest version of pip, then delete ~/.cache/pip. See also here.