how to install python distutils

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I just got some space on a VPS server(running on ubuntu 8.04), and I'm trying to install django on it. The server has python 2.5 installed, but I guess its non standard installation. When I run install script for django, I get

amitoj@ninja:~/Django-1.2.1$ python setup.py install
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 1, in <module>
    from distutils.core import setup
ImportError: No module named distutils.core

I'm stumped. All the articles on internet tell me how to install modules using distutils. But how do I get distutils itself? Can anyone point me to the archive for distutils? I looked in /usr/lib/local/python2.5, /usr/lib/python2.5 etc, and as expected there is no distutils to be found.

distutils python
11 Answers

I know this is an old question, but I just come across the same issue using Python 3.6 in Ubuntu, and I am able to solve it using the following command (this works in Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04 and 22.04):

sudo apt-get install python3-distutils
user_45750710
user_46869510

you can use sudo apt-get install python3-distutils by root permission.

i believe it worked here

user_36868660

The module not found likely means the packages aren't installed.

Debian has decided that distutils is not a core python package, so it is not included in the last versions of debian and debian-based OSes. You should be able to do

sudo apt-get install python3-distutils
sudo apt-get install python3-apt
user_87484500

If you are in a scenario where you are using one of the latest versions of Ubuntu (or variants like Linux Mint), one which comes with Python 3.8, then you will NOT be able to have Python3.7 distutils, alias not be able to use pip or pipenv with Python 3.7, see: How to install python-distutils for old python versions

Obviously using Python3.8 is no problem.

user_20887030

By searching all python-distutils related package:

apt-cache search x

I get python3-distutils-extra - enhancements to the Python3 build system

Then just try:

sudo apt-get install python3-distutils-extra
user_45473730

This didn't work for me: sudo apt-get install python-distutils

So, I tried this: sudo apt-get install python3-distutils

user_149575170
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